


A Kindness

by 9emilylime9



Category: Original Work
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, assassins though, no magic though sorry kids, those are pretty cool
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-04-30
Updated: 2014-04-30
Packaged: 2018-01-21 08:46:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 22
Words: 31,187
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1544750
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/9emilylime9/pseuds/9emilylime9
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Ajax Alterra, the teenaged son of the powerful governor of Ardor, is kidnapped by the same group of political usurpers that murdered his family six years previously, survival seems unlikely. That is, until a mysterious girl leads him right out the front door.<br/>Her name is Rosie. And she has been raised by a man who calls himself Master for the express purpose of killing and manipulating the world’s politics for his gain. The end game for him is total dominance, and it isn’t looking too far off.<br/>The reason why Rosie rescues Ajax is a mystery to him. Actually, the only two things he knows for certain are that Rosie’s master killed his family, and that he wants, somehow, to stop him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Prologue

Once upon a time there lived the son of a nobody farmer in Chrysos who wanted to see the world. At last when he came of age, he sold his family’s farm and acquired a trade. He travelled around the whole world selling and buying, and buying and selling. He soon became known in the markets he frequented, and soon his charming demeanor had him selling not merely to peasants, but also to kings.  
In this way, he got his wish. He saw the king of Undulae floundering in his attempts the knit his mountain tribes together. He saw the haughty circle of the Ardor elite taking turns ruling and increasingly ostracized peasantry. He saw the backroom dealings of the politicians in the senate of Chrysos. He saw the broken Coera, still trying to piece itself back together 200 years after its civil war. He saw the frozen wasteland of Glacia, ruled by the icy dynasty of the goddess Lizabet. He saw the trusting and feeble kind of Tellus, more interested in his wine than his subjects. He saw the disconnected Bellua, and its simple peoples. He saw the war-loving, fickle tribes of Lacera, and their constant attempts to sail through the Frozen Sea to take Glacia as their own.  
He saw all of this and couldn’t help wonder why no one had tried to take advantage of all this weakness and corruption. And the kings, still enamored by his wit and charm, brought him tantalizingly closer into their inner circles.  
One day, as he rode to his inn through the poorest part of the Undulae city of Guan, he saw a pack of fighting, teenaged boys. There was a large group of six circling one, the tallest one, who looked gangly and worse-for-wear with his torn rags and multiple cuts and bruises. However, he had somehow managed to get his hands on a sword, and the encircling boys look scared of it. It looked as though the lanky boy had already taken several swings at them. One of the boys behind him took a step forward. The lanky boy responded by turning blindingly fast on his heel and slashing at him, cutting him across the chest. The wound appeared shallow, but it sent all the boys scampering away.  
The man, who had watched this process with an intriguing idea hatching in his mind, now dismounted and approached the lanky boy with the sword.  
“What’s your name, son?” the man asked. The boy looked up at him with narrowed eyes. “Don’t worry, I won’t hurt you,” the man said.  
The boy still looked suspicious, his eyes were still narrowed.  
“Hunter,” he said, brandishing his sword.  
“And where did you get that sword, Hunter?”  
“I found it. It’s mine.”  
“Good,” the man said. “How old are you?”  
The boy raised his sword quickly. “Who are you?”  
“You may call me Master,” the man said. “And I want you to work with me.”  
The boy hesitated in his brandishing. “For gold?” he said.  
“More than you could ever think of ways to spend,” Master replied.  
The boy lowered his sword. Master took a step closer.  
“How old are you?”  
“Fifteen,” the boy said.  
“Have you ever killed a man?”  
“Once,” the boy said, jutting out his lower lip.  
“Very good,” Master said. “I have plans for you.” He smiled.

 

A week later, the king of Undulae was dead.


	2. Chapter 2

Part One---Sixteen Years Later 

Chapter One

He was cold and scared.  
His father was lying next to him, still out cold from whatever drug had been used on them.  
Shakily, he sat up, taking in his surroundings. The torch on the wall was feeble, but from its light he could make out bars in front of him, and to either side. His back was against a slimy wall, and a layer of straw gave his legs minimal shielding from the equally slimy floor.   
He leaned his head back against the wall, closing his eyes, wishing himself back into his soft, safe bed. He was wishing so hard his eyes hurt from being squeezed so determinedly shut.   
He took a shaky breath around the lump in his throat. It was the silence that was the worst, he decided. Though the dark surrounding his little oasis of light was a close second. Even if he did open his eyes he couldn’t see what, or worse, who, would be coming for him from the shadows. He trembled at the thought.  
The longer he waited, however long it was, it just got worse. He was tensed up so that he doubted he would ever fully be calm and relaxed again.   
And that was before a man’s voice to his right whispered, “You’re Ajax Alterra.”  
With a jolt and an oath, Ajax jerked away from that voice, now breathing hard, his heart feeling as though seized by icy hands.   
He could just make out a shadowy profile in the cell adjoining his.   
“How… how do you know my name?” he asked it, his voice a hoarse whisper. His breathing remained shallow, his head was racing.  
The profile did not respond immediately. It turned to look at him, and Ajax could make out a prominent nose, though little else.   
At last, the shadowy man responded.  
“Blonde hair, blue eyes, around eighteen years old, and important enough to be taken alive,” he said. “Very few people fit that description.”  
Ajax’s eyes narrowed. “But how do you know that?”  
“I know many things,” the man said. The shadows shifted around him. Ajax thought it looked like a shrug. “That’s why they put me here.”  
“Then why am I here?” Ajax asked, sinking to his knees and slumping once again against the wall. “I don’t know anything.”  
“You’re the Lord Governor of Ardor’s son,” he said as though it needed no other explanation.  
“And?”  
“They want your father,” he replied.  
“But they have my father,” Ajax said, gesturing towards the still unconscious form.  
The man shifted his head, evidently confirming this for himself.  
“Interesting,” he murmured.   
Ajax waited for him to say more, but he didn’t. He began to feel a new twinge of fear. Something about the way the man was now looking at him gave him the eerie feeling that he was not going to getting out of this place alive.   
At last Ajax couldn’t bear the silence.   
“You told me you were here because you know things,” he said hesitantly. “What do you know?”  
“Enough to see what was happening,” he responded.   
“And that is?”  
The man shifted slightly, so that he could move his hands better.  
“Did you never find it funny,” he began, “That all the world’s political leaders seem to be changing, or dropping dead one by one? Because that’s what’s happening. The most brilliant political takeover the world has ever seen is unfolding as we speak, unknown to all until it’s too late. And at the root, it always seems that there is one organization. “  
“This?” Ajax whispered.   
“Yes,” the man said. “Whatever political turmoil happens, it’s always them. Every time, and now more than ever. It seems that all the most influential people in the world are dying off or vanishing. And it’s more than just a power play. It’s a worldwide coup. A silent, worldwide coup.”  
“Well, it can’t be that silent. I’ve heard rumors,” Ajax said. His teeth were gritted a little. “About two assassins.”  
The man seemed to study him. “Ah, yes. Your mother and sister was it? Six years ago, as I recall. Killed in your own home by arrows. Targeting loved ones without mercy. Very persuasive tactic. Likely necessary, too. You know what they say about the noble oligarchs of Volcno, after all.”   
“It was them,” Ajax said. His hands were clenched in shaking fists. “And I didn’t need you to tell me that. I figured it out on my own, thanks.”   
Anger was good. Anger was quickly replacing fear, spreading through his blood, making it hot instead of icy. He still trembled, but it was with rage now. He still had that memory from six years ago, could perfectly recall the dull thuds of two arrows sinking into flesh, and the twang of a third, barely an inch from his form, embedded deep within a mahogany desk. He could see the red of the blood, still, leaking from the crumpled forms of his mother, and his little sister, Amber, who was barely eight years old at the time. It stained their white dresses, and all Ajax could think at that time was just how much Amber would hate to have such a stain on her pretty dress.   
“But that can’t be true, can it? It’s impossible to have done all you say they have done with two people,” Ajax said. His teeth still sounded gritted.  
“Impossible. And yet it’s been done. Two major arms in a leader’s employ, and he is a mastermind, and a genius. They say he trained his assassins himself, and they are elite in every degree. Even today, nobody is sure who they are, or who they were. Naturally, they hire guards for this place, but those two are his only envoys.”  
“Three people,” Ajax said.   
“Three,” the man confirmed.  
So much more burned in Ajax’s mind, but as he opened his mouth to ask, he heard two people walking down the corridor. He quickly lay down, just in case. The man to whom he was speaking retreated back into the shadows of his own cell.  
Fear gnawed at his insides as he waited to see the walking men.   
When they finally came into his field of vision, Ajax instinctively shrank against the cold wall of his cell.   
He recognized the lanky, pointed man as the one who had kidnapped him. The other man managed somehow to be taller, and carried himself as though he were unconquerable. He spoke to the hunter with condescension, and with a voice that sent chills down Ajax’s spine.  
They stopped just outside Ajax and his father’s cell, talking quietly. Ajax didn’t dare move a muscle.  
“You brought his son back as well?”   
Ajax’s breath caught in his throat.  
“I felt he might prove himself… useful,” the hunter responded.  
“Not enough to persuade me to keep him.”  
“What do you wish me to do?”  
“Kill him by morning.”  
The hunter nodded and they walked away. Ajax’s breathing had become haggard. It felt as though ice was coursing through his veins, and his whole body was shaking.   
When he heard their footsteps disappear up a stairway, he turned to look at the man he had been talking to.  
“Is that why you thought it was ‘interesting’ that I was here?” he whispered with a fair amount of malice.  
“Yes,” the man responded.   
“You knew they never intended to keep me?”  
“Naturally. It is not the way of these men to show mercy, nor to take useless prisoners.”  
“Great.”   
Ajax curled into a ball and took a deep breath, trying to convince himself that he was not going to die. It wasn’t working.


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter Two

“So I hear you’ve been sentenced to death.”   
Ajax started awake at her words. When his eyes flew open, he found them looking directly into a pair of the brightest blue eyes he had ever seen.  
The girl to whom they belonged leaned back, just in time to avoid his flailing arms as he jumped to his feet in shock.  
She stood up slowly, raising an eyebrow and crossing her arms.   
At first Ajax could not even find the words to begin spluttering questions. He simply stared. She was nearly a foot shorter than him, but she was poised as though his superior. Her eyes, much more vibrantly blue than his own, stood out against her copper-colored skin on her exquisite, elfin face, and her long, black hair was pulled back into a messy plait. Ajax blinked to make sure she was real. She was so beautiful that he could have sworn she was an angel.  
“I’ve decided to rescue you,” she said then. “It’s your lucky day.”  
Ajax stared.  
“Hello?”   
“What?” Ajax could scarcely believe what he was hearing. No way was he this lucky of a bastard. This must be a dream. It had to be.  
“I told you,” she said. “I’m rescuing you.”   
Ajax stared at her, squinting a little just to be safe, he even gave her a little shove, just to make sure she was solid. He’d read about the delusions of desperate men enough times so see the signs.  
She shoved him back, though, and it hurt.   
“Ouch!”  
“For the love of all the gods- hurry up before I change my mind!”   
Ajax raised a hand in compliance and scurried over to his father’s still-unconscious form, took an arm, and started dragging.  
“No,” the girl said. She grabbed his wrist and made him let go.  
“He’s still drugged,” he said.   
“He’s not coming,” the girl answered.   
“But he’s the important one.”  
“Yes, and he’s not coming.”   
“Some rescue.”  
She raised an eyebrow.  
There were several voices coming down the hall.   
“We have to go. Now.” she said, she then started tugging him by the wrist to the door.   
“Who are you, anyway?”  
Shadows on the wall were getting closer.   
“You have got to be kidding,” she said, and she pulled him out of the cell swiftly, somehow managing to shut the bars quietly while manhandling Ajax across the floor and into a shadowy, empty cell across the way. A minute later, two guards on patrol strolled past the cell, giving it little thought as they walked.   
After allowing another minute or so to pass, the girl took his wrist again, and was swiftly pulling him down the hall. She paused at the base of the stairs briefly, once they were out of the range of the patrol, and in that grimy corner a man in similar outfitting to the other guards was slumped on the ground in a puddle of his own blood. Ajax’s breath hitched then, and felt a chill rake through his body. But before he could stop to process what was going on, the girl had him desperately trying to keep up again. She had yanked him down and around several sets of stairs and corridors before it occurred to him to be impressed by the sheer size of the complex. Every once in a while she would yank him sharply behind a corner and shush him, before resuming tugging. Twice, he thought he saw more bodies.

In no time, it seemed, he was walking out of the most feared, secure prison in the world, all his trust in the hands of a mysterious girl. She yanked him for what seemed like miles before his numb brain realized that he was about to collapse from exhaustion. He thought he muttered something along the lines of, “I’m tired,” before his knees buckled. The girl’s oath was the last thing he heard before he fell asleep.


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter Three

The next morning, Ajax awoke and slowly sat up, groaning from his stiff back. He rubbed his neck absentmindedly as he observed his surroundings. He had somehow ended up in a small clearing. There were a number of berry bushes tangled in with the trees, and he appeared to have slept on the mossy ground. He heard leaves crunching under someone’s steps nearby, and recoiled from the sound. He began to panic, wondering what he should do if it were Master, or some kind of dangerous animal. His heart sped up as he heard the steps come closer.  
But it was just the girl from the previous night. She was even more beautiful than he remembered, though her hair was stringy and unkempt and her dress, simple, common thing that it was, looked as though it had been snagged on one too many thorn bushes. With a disappointed pang, he realized that he probably looked much worse.  
She popped a berry in her mouth from the small pile in her hand and sat down on a rock, studying him. She had tiniest of smirks on her face due to, he assumed, his matted hair and dirt-covered skin. Perfect.   
He sighed and looked at his hands. He felt his stomach rumbling. He looked back up at her as she ate another berry.  
“Where-“  
She raised an eyebrow and nodded at the bushes to her left.  
“Oh.”  
He got up and picked himself a handful. Then he returned to where he had been sitting. All the while, she watched him, and he watched her back.  
She wasn’t staring at him like some of the girls did in Ardor, giggling behind their hands and blushing. She wasn’t staring at him with any contempt, either. She wasn’t even sizing him up, at least he didn’t think she was, she didn’t look like she was expecting him to run away or something. She just watched him.   
So he watched her back, though his own expression was of, if anything, confusion.  
When she finished her handful of berries she absent-mindedly rubbed her hands together and stood up, stretching.  
“We should go,” she said.   
As her arms returned to her side, the hilt of the knife sheathed in her leather belt flashed in the sun. Then Ajax remembered all the threats, the fear, and all of a sudden all he could see was that guard he’d glimpsed wallowing dead in his own blood. It all came back and hit him suddenly, and he was swooning in what morphed into anger.  
There she was eating her berries so indifferently, so nonchalant, not asking him once what he wanted, considering his feelings, or thinking to tell him who the hell she was.   
He stood up with her, but he crossed his arms and rooted himself to the spot.  
“No, I’m not going anywhere,” he said. “Not until you explain what the hell’s going on.”  
She sighed, turned, and made to walk out of the clearing then, clearly indicating that he was to follow her. He stayed put.  
“Not until you tell me who the hell you are!” he yelled at the back of her head. “And who the hell you work for! I’m not stupid, I won’t just go off with a total stranger, murderer! Is this some kind of joke? Trick? What’s the point of you rescuing me? Why didn’t you rescue my father as well? What the hell do you intend to do with me? Just stick me on a ship? Do you know who I am?!” On and on he went.  
“And now I’m tired, sore, and dirty, and I don’t know how you’re going to manage to keep me hidden, I don’t know what you want with me, and I don’t know what’s going on, and why you didn’t take my father, and I want to be with him. He needs me, and-“  
“Are you going to stop being such a spoiled prick anytime soon?” she said. She stopped walking then, whipped around, and was looking at him very sternly.  
Ajax was taken aback. “Excuse me?”   
“I saved your life. Your father is fine, and we are quite hidden, although,” she took this opportunity to look at him with a plainly irritated expression, “because you took it into your head to make such an uproar, that may no longer be the case. Right now I plan on taking you on a ship to get home, however, if you make my life any more difficult, I will take you right back to Hunter and Master, and they will praise me for catching you, and then kill you just to be rid of you.”  
Ajax swallowed as he processed her words. Her expression was one of the most lethal that he had ever seen, and all of a sudden, he felt very scared. Whatever burning questions her speech had raised in him suddenly seemed at best trivial. Except for one.  
“Who are you?” he asked in a small voice.  
She smiled without humor. “Call me Rosie.”

 

Ajax opened his mouth, but closed it just as soon. It had been about an hour of silent walking away from the clearing, and his questions had come bubbling back, although his fear to ask them had by no means gone away.  
At last he summoned up enough courage to talk.  
“Why would you be praised for catching me?”  
He heard her sigh in front of him. She picked up her pace.  
Well, she hadn’t killed him.  
“Three guesses?” he asked.  
She didn’t respond.  
“You work for him.”  
She sighed again. “And?” she said.  
She hadn’t denied it. He felt a chill move down his spine. Then the words escaped from his mouth without his permission.  
“You’re the second assassin.”  
She didn’t say anything in response. She just kept walking.  
“But why would you rescue-“  
“It’s complicated,” she said.  
Ajax was able to keep his burning need to know controlled for about a minute. Then, mentally kicking himself for speaking the moment his mouth opened, he said: “I think I can follow.”  
She narrowed her eyes.   
“I have my reasons,” she said. “In fact, I have two.”   
Ajax kept the ensuing silence for what seemed like ages. For almost a mile there was nothing to be heard but crunching leaves and his occasional swearing after jamming his toe on a tree root.  
“Will you at least tell me where we’re going?” he asked.  
“Amber,” she said.  
Amber was in walking distance, then. The port town was barely a ship’s ride away from Volcno.   
She was taking him home.  
It was when he had finally stopped jumping at every little cracking stick or foreign birdcall that Rosie stopped walking suddenly, and tensed. She turned towards him, a look of concentration on her face. Then her eyes widened.  
“Wha-“ But Ajax hadn’t even finished saying the word when she tackled him to the ground.   
She clamped her hand hard over his mouth. His eyes were wide and confused, but she did not care to explain. Her body was tense and stiff, and her fingers gripped his jaw tighter.   
When she finally released him, he had red marks on his face exactly where her fingers had been.  
“Are we being followed?” he whispered. He mentally kicked himself for shouting so much earlier, and attracting so much attention to their location.  
“Get up,” she hissed.  
She grabbed his wrist, pulled Ajax up and dragged him through the trees at double their previous pace.

Rosie walked remarkably fast for somebody of her stature. Ajax struggled to keep up, and Rosie was clearly growing more and more impatient every time he tripped over a rogue tree root or moaned when a loose branch whipped at his face.   
“Shall I carry you?” she asked at one point. Ajax stuck his tongue out at her when she turned back towards their destination and continued to plow forward through the trees.   
As the day wore on, the trees began to thin. Soon they were walking across fields and passing the occasional house.   
The occasional house multiplied into several settlements, and at last they reached a port town that was bustling about in the afternoon sun. 

They approached a dock where many ships were anchored and the people were as abundant as the fish below them.   
After a number of questions and dragging Ajax twice around the port, Rosie appeared to have found what she was looking for. They stopped walking and she pointed to a respectably sized ship.  
“This,” she said, “Will take you back to Volcno. And as soon as you’re on board, you will never see me again.”  
He nodded.  
“And listen to me,” she said, looking him in the eyes meaningfully, “I never helped you, and you don’t even know who I am. Understand?”  
He nodded again, never mind his still total confusion as to why she’d decided to help him in the first place.   
“Good,” she said, turning to the market stalls. “I suppose I’ll have to be getting back before-” she froze. Without warning, she dropped down behind a pile of cargo and dragged Ajax with her.   
“What?” he said before she shushed him.   
“Hunter is out there,” she breathed. Ajax felt his heart turn to ice and drop into his stomach.  
She covertly dragged him near the hull of another ship. It was a hundred times more massive than the one headed to Volcno, and appeared to be a passenger ship.   
“Get inside,” she hissed to Ajax, who complied wordlessly.  
“He saw us,” she said, once they were shielded from the vision of those on the docks. From the way she said it, it seemed that was about the same as a death warrant.


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter Four

Rosie had dragged Ajax into what appeared to be the cargo hold of the ship. There were many large crates, barrels, and sacks stacked in the dark hull. Ajax had been quickly tugged behind a crate.   
Several times Ajax thought of asking her what her plan was. Each time the urge to ask burned within him, he glanced at her, but the more he glanced, the more he came to realize that he was not seeing the girl that was rumored to have murdered countless men. She was biting her lip and several times took deep, calming breaths. After what felt like an age, Ajax began to relax. Surely after all this time had passed, there was nothing to be afraid of. They were safe.  
But Rosie was now gripping his arm so hard that he could feel her nails cutting into his skin. He was about to protest, but after an annoyed glance at her, every thought stopped but fear. Rosie looked scared. And if Rosie was scared, he didn’t want to think what kind of unstoppable monster might be present.   
And then he heard it: several soft footsteps and a voice; a cold voice that he had heard thrice before.  
“Come out,” crooned Hunter in a barely audible whisper. He was close, but not dangerously so yet. However, he would be able to see them if he walked further down the cargo hold. Ajax’s heart started to beat so loud that he was afraid it would give them away.   
He watched, afraid to make even the slightest sound or movement, as another man walked further forward than Hunter. If he so much as glanced around, he would see them. And Ajax didn’t want to think of the consequences of their being discovered.   
Ajax held his breath, begging all of the gods that he knew to keep the man’s back turned to them. Rosie’s grip on his arm tightened.   
Ajax exhaled as the man plowed further on, keeping his back to them.   
But then, a man whispered, “Where’s my little thorn?” so close to his ear that ice shot through his veins and he stopped breathing once more. The arm that Rosie gripped began to go numb. Ajax ever so slowly looked up with eyes half closed, hoping beyond hope that he had heard a carrying whisper.  
There was Hunter, towering over them. Ajax felt himself almost faint as a wave of uncontrollable, dizzying fear surged through him. This was it.   
But then, Ajax saw that something wasn’t quite right. Hunter had not leered down at them, or attempted to drag them off. He was just standing there. He didn’t see them, but was turned towards the opposite direction. Ajax held his breath.  
After an agonizingly long wait, Hunter finally announced to the other man, “They must have gone deeper into the ship. Come with me.”  
Ajax could barely believe his luck. The man nearly tripped over himself to meet Hunter at a far stairway that led, Ajax assumed, to the upper floors of the ship.  
Rosie breathed deeply alongside him for a minute after the heavy door was shut.  
“On my mark,” she said, “We check to make sure the path is clear, and then run off the ship.” Ajax nodded to show that he understood.   
“One,” Rosie whispered, “Two, Three.”  
She dragged him with her as she peeked around the crate and attempted to pick out the exit with eyes squinting in the darkness of the cargo room. She began to pull Ajax forward, but suddenly she gasped and pulled him right back where they were.  
“There’s another man,” she groaned in a whisper.   
Ajax started to swear, but she shushed him.   
She crawled over his seated form, and peeked once again. This time though, Ajax assumed, she was watching the guard.  
“We can’t get off with him there,” whispered Rosie so quietly that Ajax had to strain to hear her. “Our best chance is to find an empty room, lock the door, and hope that they don’t find us.”  
“How do we get past the guard?” Ajax asked with the same volume. Rosie thought for a moment.  
“I’ll make a distraction, and we’ll run to the stairs. Hopefully, he’ll never know that we were here.”  
“But what if Hunter is on the other side of the door?” breathed Ajax, feeling fear begin to trickle into his heart again.  
“He won’t be,” Rosie said, but she sounded more as if she were wishing than as if she were certain. She began to grope around for something on the ground.   
At last, she picked up what appeared to be a rogue potato that had spilled out of a nearby sack. Ajax couldn’t be certain with the dim light.  
Rosie carefully weighed it in her hand and watched the guard with immense concentration. And then, she hurled it a few feet above him, which caused a barrel that was stacked above his head to teeter, then fall. But before Ajax could see what happened next, Rosie then seized his arm and sprinted with him as fast as she could. They took more time on the stairs, after ensuring from a distance that the guard was sufficiently incapacitated, so that they could slip onto the upper decks of the ship transparently. 

With bated breath, Rosie eased the heavy door open, and peeked around it as invisibly as she could. She exhaled a breath that she had been holding, and opened the door wider, and wider, until she was sure that the hallway was deserted.   
Then, she took Ajax’s arm and dashed again.


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter Five

Rosie dragged Ajax into the closest deserted room and frantically bolted the door.   
Ajax slumped, ashen faced, onto the floor.   
“You think we’re safe?” he asked. She raised her eyebrows.  
“Damn,” he groaned.   
“Just get behind something,” she said. “He knows we’re here, it will only be a matter of time.”   
“Does he want me?” Ajax asked, shuddering involuntarily.  
“Don’t be stupid,” Rosie said. “All he wants is your head.”  
Ajax scrambled behind a row of hammocks. Rosie joined him.

“What about you?” Ajax asked quietly once they were safely hidden from the view from the door.   
“What does it matter to you?”  
“Nothing,” Ajax said. “I’m just curious, that’s all.”  
She didn’t speak for several moments.  
“I don’t know,” she said at last, shrugging. “I’m not even sure if he’ll kill me.”  
“Not even to make an example of you or something?”  
“That’s not how it works.”  
“Oh,” Ajax said. 

Over the duration of the rest of the afternoon, several pairs of footsteps walked by the room, each sending Ajax’s heart into a panicked frenzy. He kept thinking of the maid, the guards, his family, all the dead and bloody corpses he had seen in his lifetime, and knowing he was next. He couldn’t get them out of his head. Then something occurred to him.  
“You killed those guards.”  
His eyes slid down to the glint of silver sheathed at Rosie’s hip.  
“With that knife.”  
She shrugged.  
“They were in the way.”

After another minute of his silent contemplation, something else occurred to Ajax.  
“Do you know where this ship is headed?”  
Rosie turned her head to stare at him warningly in answer.  
He closed his mouth.   
She resumed her previous occupation.  
Ajax waited again, fighting the urge to break the tense silence between them. 

He watched the light from the porthole begin to fade and darken. There had not even been a knock on their door, and Ajax’s fears of Hunter had long since subsided.   
Much to his surprise, it was Rosie who then broke the silence.  
“I’m going to find the galley,” she said. She stood up and dusted off her skirt.  
“Are you insane?” Ajax said. “He’ll see you.”  
“Please,” Rosie replied. “And I will go insane if I have to spend another second listening to your damn stomach rumble. I’m surprised you haven’t started moaning about it yet.”  
“Hey-“  
But she was already halfway out the door. She closed it softly behind her.

Rosie returned with a loaf of stale bread and an orange in hand. Both of these she chucked in Ajax’s direction. Then she extracted a bottle of wine from her bodice. Ajax started chewing thoughtfully on the bread while she uncorked the bottle with her teeth and took a long swig.  
“I’m thirsty,” she said in answer to his quizzical look.  
“Okay.”  
She sat down back where she had been sitting all day and had more swigs in silence.  
“None for you?” Ajax asked, indicating the bread that he was well on his way to wolfing down.  
“Ate in the kitchen,” she replied.   
“Ah.”

Sometime after Ajax had finished his food, Rosie turned her head from the patch of wall that she had been contemplating to Ajax and wordlessly offered him the bottle. He was actually quite thirsty, so he scooted over to where she was sitting and took a sip. It was sour and cheap. But then again, that probably meant that nobody would miss it.  
They passed the bottle back and forth for five more minutes before Rosie spoke.   
“This is shit.”  
Ajax snorted. He couldn’t help it.  
Rosie glared at him.  
“What?” she said.  
“I mean, it is kind of all your fault,” Ajax replied. “You were the one who got us both into this.”  
Rosie choked a little on her sip and looked at him as though she couldn’t believe what he had just said. “I saved your life.”  
“Yeah, for what? So we could both die a day later?”  
Her eyes narrowed. “Obviously not.”  
“What, then? So we could sit on a miserable ship and waste away, and any moment could die horribly?”  
Rosie blinked. In the next instant she had seized a fistful of the front of his shirt and pulled him so that his nose was nearly brushing hers. He felt her knife against his throat.  
But before he had time to take more than a few panicked breaths, she released him. She kept the knife in her hands, though. Turning it around slowly, inspecting its sharpness. Making a show of it.  
“I’ve been raised to be Master’s perfect little tool since he discovered me in Undulae,” she said. “The first time I killed a man, I was six.”  
She stowed her knife away and looked him in the eyes deeply, so he could see her severity.  
“I could kill you if I were bound from head to toe, unarmed, and blindfolded. No, wait. That’s too simple. I could kill you if I’d had all my arms and legs broken, and then tied up, if I were blindfolded, barehanded, and if you had every weapon you could carry and a two-day head start. Start whining again and your sorry ass will be so deep in the ocean that daddy’ll never have to see your mangled corpse in the flesh.”  
She was still staring him down.  
He believed her.  
She pulled back and sized him up for a moment. Then she punched him in the jaw.  
The blow sent him reeling and brought tears to his eyes it hurt so bad. It felt like it was pulsing in agony, and he had definitely heard something crack on impact.  
“Holy-” he groaned out through gritted teeth, clutching at his face.  
“You deserved that and you know it, you stupid, blithering idiot,” was her reply. She tipped back her head and downed some more of the bottle’s contents. 

When the pain had subsided to a more tolerable level, Rosie took pity on him and handed him back the bottle. He took it while throwing her his angriest glare. But it did make him feel better.  
When he felt up to talking again, he did, if only out of spite. She looked like she despised every word that passed through her lips in response to one of his questions.  
“So how many people have you killed?”  
“I’ve lost count.”  
“How many kings?”  
“I don’t know.”  
“How can you not know? There are only so many kings in the world to be killed.” He was determined to get at least one straight answer out of her.  
She raised an eyebrow.  
“Okay, fine,” he said. “Then tell me what regimes you’ve toppled. This is important. It would be useful to know which countries are safe to go to now that I’m some kind of fugitive.”  
“You’ll be plenty safe. I’m a fugitive, too.”  
He let out an exasperated sigh.  
A minute passed.  
Then, much to his surprise, Rosie started to speak.   
“Ardor will be taken one way or another, now that your father is.”  
“How?” Ajax asked. He sat up straighter.  
“Bribery, or he’ll be killed and replaced.” She shrugged. “And then Master is also well on the way to attaining Chrysos. Tellus is taken, as are Lacera, Undulae and Bellua.”  
Ajax took a minute to contemplate that information.  
If Rosie was right, and Ajax was sadly sure she was, it meant that three countries remained. There was Glacia, the land of the proud Queen Siri, was a trading friend of his father’s country. Once Ardor was taken, Ajax doubted it would be long before that was as well, considering the icy land’s need of trade for food. Coera was also left, but its people were known for being peacemakers after their civil war. It would be simple for that to be taken. And the last was Larvatus, the witch country. No one had dared set foot on that place in centuries. He doubted that Master had even considered it in his scheme.  
Ajax’s jaw set rigid. Master had a cakewalk in front of him.   
“So basically, nowhere is safe unless we want to take our chances with Larvatus?” he said.  
“Yes,” Rosie replied.  
“And for all we know, this ship is taking us somewhere where we could be hand-delivered to him before dinnertime.”  
“Most likely.”  
“Then please tell me how the hell we are supposed to avoid getting killed?”  
She turned to glare at him.  
“With care and precision,” she said.   
“Wow,” he replied. He took a very generous swig of the wine.  
He continued in his contemplation, brow furrowing.   
“How the hell do you even take over the world with three people?” he asked at last, turning to look at Rosie.  
She shot him a quizzical look. “You don’t.”  
She studied him for a moment then, and let out something that almost sounded like a laugh. “You were in the cell next to Sirus, gods, you believed him. Every word.”  
That took him aback. “Hey, I was still hazy and tired. And at the time it seemed pretty believable.”  
“Gods, could you imagine if someone could do that?”  
“Do what?”  
“Bring the world to their knees, country by country, checking them off some diabolical list as he sat in the shadows, and every day he would point a finger and say, ‘Go Rosie, I’m in a fiery mood today, let’s take Ardor. Remember to be home before sundown so you won’t miss dinner.’” She let out another laugh. “Ha. Only in his dreams. The only reason he keeps that nutcase around is because he gives him some sick sort of gratification, validation, or something. I don’t know, and I never really wanted to. And that guy, Sirus, he pretty much asked to be caught, and he believes it. He believes it all, believes that Master’s some kind of god with terrible purpose.”  
“Is he?” Ajax asked.  
Rosie considered this.  
“No,” she said at last. “But sometimes I don’t think he’s human.”


	7. Chapter 7

Chapter Six

For the second time in two days, Ajax woke up with a sore back. As he tried to muster the initiative to move and face his new aches and pains, he groaned. There he was, lying on a rough wooden floor underneath a hammock. Fantastic.  
As he sat up, his hand knocked the now-empty bottle of wine on its side. It clattered against the wood floor. His head pounded at the sound.  
He sat up in another groan.  
Rosie smirked at him from her seated position on the floor.   
At least she didn’t say anything.  
Ajax yawned and stretched out his arms.  
“What now?” he asked.   
Rosie stood up, stretched, and took a deep breath.   
“Now, I suppose, we ought to kill Hunter,” she said.  
“How are we going to-”   
“You stand back, I kill the guards, and then I kill him.”  
“What if he tries to kill me while you get the guards?”  
“Then I’ll kill him first,” she said.  
“Or,” Ajax said, “I could just stay here, and not get killed?”  
“Absolutely not.”  
“Oh, so leaving me somewhere hidden and safe is out of the question, but bringing me to the slaughter is acceptable?”  
“I’m not leaving you alone to screw things up when I’ve gone to all this trouble to keep you alive.”  
“But what happens when they come at me then? I sit there and look pretty?”  
Rosie sighed. Then she rooted through the pouch on her belt and pulled out a second knife.  
“Then you use this. Happy?” she said, handing it to him.  
“I don’t know how to fight with a knife,” he said.  
“What, they don’t teach you basic self defense at the Alterra Manor?”  
“They do. With proper weapons. With swords.”  
“Well, you’re going to have to learn to use a knife,” Rosie said.  
“Fine.”  
He held it gingerly in one hand.  
“No,” she said, correcting his grip.   
“Are you sure you don’t have some kind of collapsible sword in that pouch?” Ajax asked.  
“No. And you’re not going to want a sword if you have to fight them, because they will have them, and they will be better than you. If you want to have the biggest advantage, a knife is best.”  
“I doubt it,” Ajax said, grimacing.  
“Well,” Rosie said, “Think of it like a sword.”  
“It’s not a sword, it’s a knife,” Ajax said.  
Rosie sighed. “Pretend that it’s a sword for a moment, please.”  
“Fine,” Ajax said, changing his grip.  
“Use the grip I showed you, please,” Rosie said with closed eyes, pinching the bridge of her nose.   
Ajax redid his grip and waited.  
“Now pretend it’s a sword,” Rosie said without moving.  
“Fine,” Ajax said.  
“The knife is like a sword because you can kill people in similar ways. The only difference is that instead of mainly moving your wrist, you can move your whole body and dodge easier,” Rosie said. She pulled her own knife out of its sheath.  
“Evade my blade,” she said. Ajax looked hesitantly at her knife.   
“Oh, come on,” she said. Ajax exhaled in a resigned sort of way. Rosie took it as her cue to stab at him lazily. He slapped her knife away with the flat of his own.   
“Wrong,” she said. “Never parry with a knife. If I were really trying to kill you, it would do nothing. Dodge instead.”  
She stabbed at him again, and this time he hopped to one side.  
“Better,” she said, “But be more creative. Observe.” She motioned for him to stab at her.   
He complied. In one fluid motion, Rosie arched away from the blade, spun around, and had her knife at his neck.  
“You couldn’t do that with a sword,” she said.   
“Teach me how to do that,” he said, attempting to keep an eye on the knife at his neck. She released him and he sighed in relief.   
“While they thrust their blade forward, they don’t have time to move it anywhere else. Take that opportunity and get in as close as you can so that their sword is useless. Then, you kill them. They never stand a chance,” Rosie said.  
Ajax nodded.   
“Let’s try your dodge again,” Rosie said.   
They continued to practice for another hour, and over the course of that hour, Ajax became satisfactorily good with his blade.  
“I suppose that that should cover the basics,” sighed Rosie after sparring with Ajax. She had beaten him, as she had every other time, but this time he had put up a fair resistance. Or so she said.   
“Finally,” he said. She had put him through several exhausting and frustrating drills. “I don’t suppose we’ll be able to eat soon? I’m famished.”  
“You’ll manage.”  
“Do you have a plan?” he asked.  
“Nope,” she said. “But he hasn’t found us yet, so he won’t find us. We’ll find him.”  
“Where is he?” Ajax asked.  
“Let’s find out,” Rosie said.   
She motioned for Ajax to follow and quietly unlatched the door. They crept into the hallway and she led Ajax up towards the main deck of the ship. Thunder began to rumble as they did this, and soon the passageways were full of people trying to get below to their cabins to avoid getting caught out in the storm.  
“By the time the rain comes, nobody should be on the deck,” murmured Rosie.  
“What does this have to do with us?” Ajax asked.  
“We can lure Hunter and those two guards onto the deck, and then we’ll have room and no witnesses,” she replied, looking pleased. “Now we just need to find them.”  
“They could be eating,” Ajax said. His stomach rumbled right on cue.  
“Or at the very least waiting for us to eat,” Rosie said, looking annoyed at him. She beckoned for Ajax to follow her, and she led him to the galley. The nearer they came to it, the more fear cured in the pit of Ajax’s stomach. He was waiting for Hunter to walk up to them and kill them before he even had the chance to draw his knife.   
He took several deep breaths as they neared the galley. Rosie paused just out of eyesight from those inside and turned to Ajax.  
“Run when I say and follow me.”  
Ajax nodded.  
Then Rosie made a point of walking past the door. Ajax thought he heard the sound of a table coming crashing to the ground. That was when Rosie started sprinting. It was all he could do to keep up.  
Once they reached the deck, Rosie continued to run until she had come to about the middle. It was hard to tell in the heavy rain. Clouds darkened the sky, and Ajax was quickly soaked through. He gripped the knife in his pocket until it hurt and tried to make himself small behind Rosie. Maybe they would be too busy with her to even notice him. Hopefully.

His heart stopped for an instant when he saw Hunter climb onto the deck, both his guards clambering after him. Hunter made a small movement with his hands, and the guards separated, starting to walk around either side of the deck. Ajax sucked in his breath. If Rosie didn’t do something, they would be surrounded. That would be very, very bad.   
Hunter walked purposely towards them, his eyes on Rosie, and a small, cocky grin on his face.   
Then the guard to Ajax’s left picked up his pace and started running at Rosie, sword drawn. Rosie threw her knife so fast that Ajax barely saw her arm move.   
The guard let out a yelp before he slumped over, knife buried deep in his chest.  
Then Hunter picked up his pace, and he drew his own sword.  
“Knife,” Rosie said, teeth gritted.  
“Wha-“  
“Give me your knife. Now.”  
Ajax hesitated. Hunter was extremely close. So was the second guard.  
“Now!”  
He held it out and she snatched it up, charging at Hunter. Ajax watched mesmerized for an instant, before he heard the sound of the second guard drawing his sword quite close. Ajax glanced helpless at Rosie for a second, but she was far too occupied keeping Hunter busy to even remember that there was a second guard. So much for all her alleged effort to keep him alive.  
Ajax stepped back, mirroring the guard’s advance. The guard was grinning, and all of a sudden he seemed uncannily intimidating and strong.  
Then Ajax remembered the dead guard and he ran for it, hearing the other following him closely with heavier footsteps.   
He stumbled as he stooped to scoop up the sword that had fallen from the dead guard’s hand, and whipped around just in time to catch the sword of the living one.   
Then there was another strike, then another, and Ajax could barely hear anything over the sound of his frantic breaths and madly thumping heart. The swords clashed again and again, and he barely had time to think of attacking as he parried like mad. The rain was falling so thick he could barely see in front of him, and the sword he was holding was poorly balanced and grew heavier by the second. His fingers kept slipping on the hilt in the rain, and every time the thunder boomed he lost his concentration.   
Then one of the strikes he met sent a shiver through his sword and sent it flying from his grasping fingers. He stumbled backwards away from the guard as he lunged and tripped on the corpse behind him.   
Ajax then found the knife in the guard’s chest and pulled hard, yanking it from its deep lodging in the man’s ribs. It came out red up to the hilt, but at least it was sharp.   
The guard was taking his time advancing now, cocky. Ajax stood up, his knees quaking. He took a solid stance, holding the knife with both hands. Everything Rosie had taught him earlier fled his mind in an instant. His blood was pounding in his ears.  
He quickly glanced at Rosie and Hunter. They were still locked in consuming battle on the other side of the deck.   
Ajax gripped the knife so hard that it hurt.  
The guard was close enough to strike, but he was still advancing. His lips were moving, probably in some kind of taunt, but the wind the rain and the thunder drowned him out. Or maybe it was the sound of the keening panic running through every fiber of Ajax’s being.   
He’d never killed anybody before. He wasn’t even sure if he could. He’d never even really fought anybody before. His tutor and friends didn’t count. That wasn’t for real. This, here, though. This was way too real. He didn’t want to kill anybody, he didn’t want to ever know what that felt like. Seeing the corpses of your close family at an impressionable age tended to make you despise murder and killing.   
But kill or be killed, kill or be killed, kill or be killed. That was all that was coursing through his head. It was like a drum beating in time with his heart. But it did little to make what it looked like he was going to have to do seem okay. He cursed Rosie then, and everything he knew about her. He cursed her for everything he was about to do.  
Ajax didn’t know what possessed him in the next moment, but when the guard made to run him through, he was spinning out of the way, his eyes practically squeezed shut, and had his knife at the man’s throat, just as Rosie had shown him.  
He hesitated in that second, just for the tiniest of moments, before instinct kicked in and he finished the job.  
Ajax barely heard the thump of the guard as he hit the deck. He was stuck staring numbly at where the guard’s head had been not moments before. Then his mind understood what had happened and released the knife, which hit the floor of the boat with a clang.  
He heard the clang as he instinctively backed away from the guard’s corpse.  
Chest heaving with leftover terror and sudden fatigue, he sat down amidst the large droplets of rain that pelted his body. He refused to let himself process what he had just done.

Across the deck, Rosie was shouting thing after unintelligible thing at Hunter as she lunged at him and dodged around him. It was actually quite breathtaking to watch. It was almost too elegant to be a real fight. Rosie jumped and tumbled gracefully around Hunter like an incredibly skilled acrobat, and Hunter met each of her strikes with an equally fluid and impressive stroke or movement.  
Then in a lucky blow, Rosie kicked the sword out of Hunter’s hand and sent it sliding several yards away on the slick deck. As Hunter paused for just a second in angry shock, she stabbed her knife at him, going for his neck. In a movement so fast that it had to be premeditated, Hunter grabbed the wrist that held the knife. Then, using her left hand, Rosie punched him in the jaw.   
The force of the punch sent Hunter down, but he pulled Rosie with him by the wrist that helplessly held her knife.  
Rosie landed on top of him and quickly pinned his arm. She struggled to free her knife-wielding hand, and then when that failed she tried to move Hunter’s hand closer to his own neck. As Ajax was frozen in awe and fear, he could have sworn he saw Hunter chuckle.  
Hunter then rolled around so that it was he who was on top of Rosie to end the stalemate. Rosie managed to get him off of her with a violent kick to the stomach. He was knocked backwards hard enough for her to extract her trapped hand and scramble to her feet. She was between him and his sword and smirking triumphantly about it.  
Hunter shook his head, looking impressed. But a challenge still glinted in his eyes.  
He ran at her, and knocked her over with surprising force considering that he was only a handful of steps away. The knife flew out of her hand.  
The grappled on the deck in the most skilled and graceful wrestling match that Ajax had ever seen. Rosie would twist and reach for his neck, but Hunter would twist her the opposite way and grasp her wrist to keep her hands from throttling his throat.   
But in a sudden and utterly unmatchable feat of strength, Rosie had him forced against the wall of the boat and a hand clasped around his neck.   
Ajax could no longer see her face, but he heard little snippets of her voice saying something that he assumed was gloating in triumph.   
But in some kind of last-ditch escape attempt, or by some bizarre combination of acting forces, Hunter slipped backwards off the railing of the ship. It happened so fast that one second he was there and defeated, the next his feet were tumbling off the edge of the vessel. Rosie’s torso dragged with him as she tried to hold on to him, but a definitive splash told Ajax that she had failed to hold on. And judging by the way that she slammed her hands onto the railing of the ship in frustration, Hunter was still very much alive.


	8. Chapter 8

Chapter Seven

They walked slowly back down into the ship, taking care to not attract too much attention with their drenched and bloodstained attire. Luckily the passageways were practically deserted now, with everyone having sought shelter back in their cabins.   
Ajax was at first incredibly averse to Rosie’s suggestion of stealing new clothing, but she shut him up by pointing out that he had just killed a man, and that his conscience was already murky as it was. The idea seemed quite attractive anyway when he considered having to spend the rest of the day in a cold and wet outfit.  
Rosie was no longer dragging him, which he was grateful for. She halted to let a couple of ladies pass her by as they exited their room. Cautiously, she peered into the open doorway and then darted inside. Ajax hesitated to follow her, but before he could she was already out with a bundle of clothing under her arm.   
He followed her quick steps to an empty room. He walked inside and stood back as she shut the door. Then, she threw him a shirt and a pair of trousers, keeping a dress for herself.   
Ajax looked at her with an eyebrow raised.  
“What?” she said.   
“Are you sure we should be…” He let his sentence trail off and turned a little pink.  
Rosie looked amused.   
“I don’t care,” she said. “If you want to, go change in the corner.”  
Ajax heard the ridicule in her tone. After some thought, he irately pulled off his shirt, quickly replacing it with the dry one.   
Rosie laughed and turned around, peeling off her dress and throwing on the new one.   
“I don’t see why you’re acting so embarrassed,” she said. “You’re not exactly hideous.”   
Ajax decided to leave the compliment untouched. 

As they started to walk back to the room where they had spent the night, Ajax remembered how hungry he was. It had somehow slipped his mind while he had been busy contemplating his imminent death, but now he was ravenous. He mentioned this to Rosie, and she agreed that they should find something to eat.   
They walked to the galley, hoping that some food would be available. And indeed, as they approached, it was clear that there was a large crowd of people amassed there. The crowd wasn’t loud, though. It was buzzing, certainly, but not thunderous. Ajax was perplexed until he heard one piercing voice of a young girl ask, “Please sir, sing us another song. One about how everything started living.”  
By this time, they were on the edge of the crowd, and the crowd was barely making a sound. The fixation of all the people, whom Ajax couldn’t see around all of the people gathered, then answered, “certainly, darling,” in a smooth and melodic voice. “I’ll sing the song of how everything started living.”   
Then he strummed a few strings of an instrument and began to sing in his marvelous voice:   
“Out of nothing was born mother Esterana,   
who fashioned her husband from silence,   
thus she called him Asteios,   
and they resided timeless.   
Till of course, their son was born,   
him, they called him Hector.   
Hector brought the gift of time,   
though time never them outwore   
Then again the twins were born, Lizabet and Leon.   
The girl was ice, the boy was earth,   
but through the work of eons:   
the earth was made of rock and soil.   
Plants began to grow.   
But Lizabet was jealous,   
she’d bury them in snow.   
At last came our lady Areida,   
who I daresay watches now,   
for she rules all our seas.   
Her waves guide our bow.   
She, the ever-peaceful one,   
washed the land a-lush.   
She set each twin half a year to rule,   
and put their quarrel to a hush.   
Esterana began to fashion beasts,   
out of rock and river clay.   
So that they might nibble plants,   
be companions every day.   
But beasts were not enough, you see,   
they needed something more,   
so that they might be worshipped;   
to have their work be known for.   
So Esterana made us men,   
and set us loose on land,   
to build our world, to prosper,   
but remember it was by her hand.   
The last child of her brood   
was then born to her:   
Malinora, goddess of death,   
to watch us then and after.   
Malinora did not sit well,   
not with the rest of her kin.   
She was banished to her Abyss,   
to punish mortals of sin.   
And that is where we go, my dear.   
Every living soul.   
For, after our worship sun is set,   
we pay our deathbed toll.”

The end of the bard’s song was met with an enormous round of applause. Rosie started pulling Ajax through the throng of people to be able to see the man who had just sung. After ample pushing and apologizing, Ajax could see him. He appeared to be middle-aged, with dark hair and spindly fingers. His lightly olive-toned face was flushed with pleasure at having such a flattering audience, and his green eyes were sparkling as they darted around the crowd, unsure where to fixate.   
“Another?” asked a person in the crowd, and there were then many more people agreeing and pleading for another. The bard let his instrument sit in his lap as he threw up his hands in surrender.   
“I will,” he said, “I will, so long as you all sit. It’s hard to play when you feel like you’re packed in a barrel.”  
There was a cacophonous scuffle as everyone found a spot on the floor of the cramped galley to sit. Ajax marveled at the power that the prospect of music had on them.   
The bard strummed his strings again, dramatically, building the excitement of the crowd. His eyes darted up again and scanned the people, side to side. Ajax watched him curiously as he did this, his curiosity turning into confusion as the bard seemed to lock eyes with him for longer than a passing glance.   
As he strummed again, he seemed to make up his mind of something, for he announced quite grandly, “I’ll sing a song of beauty, of our goddess Noralina.”  
The crowd cheered. The bard looked down at his instrument and found a few choice chords that set a slightly different tone than the last song. This one was more lyrical and more colorful before his finger snagged a foreboding note.  
“In Ardor’s grandest volcano   
the god Flare gained life.   
His immortal flames were stoked,   
and he was erupted into the night.   
King of volcanoes, he was,   
from then on after.   
Nothing looked sweeter than his lava,  
nothing more baleful than his laughter.   
The breathtaking fountains of his wrath   
were shot to the skies.   
All in the world could see them,   
could hear the rumble of his cries.   
He lived for a while in our Coera,   
dwelled the mountains there.   
Made his glowing fires burst   
from the peaks of his lairs.   
He made the country desolate,   
stripped the land bare.   
For where his lava touched the ground,   
no living thing could fare.   
Areida had been watching him   
from the depths of her seas.   
She had come to admire him,   
as he destroyed the lands with ease.   
But everyone was in alarm,   
crying out for help.   
Even the gods could not stay   
the hand that fire dealt.   
Arieda, our admiring goddess   
meant indeed to go,   
but found she was very much in love   
with her newfound foe.   
But nevertheless, she seized her clouds,   
gathered all her power,   
and set loose the floodgates of the heavens   
in an eternal shower.   
For forty days, and forty nights,   
the rain never ceased.   
The mountains steamed, the fire faltered,   
but the rain never ceased.   
Eventually Areida had quenched her stores,   
and Flare was taught his lesson.   
The volcanoes of Coera had gone out   
and would never ignite again.   
As defeated Flare trudged from his lairs,   
Arieda met him by her sea.   
He knew then that he was hers   
And he’d yield to her beauty.   
There they met and paired together,   
vowing to remain two.   
And when her oceans cooled his lava,   
they saw a sight they never knew.   
For as the lava cooled, it hardened, into shapes never seen before:  
ribbons and whirls and facets,   
every glance showed them more.   
Together they had created perfection,   
a totally equal balance.   
Across the product they embraced,   
and even began to dance.   
Eventually they had a daughter.   
Noralina was her name.   
She was more beautiful than the sunrise,   
and more coveted than fame.   
She became the goddess of beauty and love,   
and took over the land,   
where her parents had met so many ages ago,   
and on the beauty had danced.   
They say her hair is the color of the sun,   
her eyes of her mother’s seas.   
She has the temper of her father,   
if you bother not to please.   
There you see, how beauty came   
out of a most unlikely place.   
But where there is a will to be,   
pure beauty has a face.”

After the song, Rosie took Ajax’s hand and led him out of the thick of the crowd into the far corner of the galley, where they both helped themselves to some food and munched quietly through another handful of the bard’s songs.   
The day passed by quite quickly. Before he knew it, he had spent two hours in the galley, and the bard struck a final chord and insisted that the crowd must allow him to rest his voice for the next time. Begrudgingly and slowly, everybody decided to yield to his plea.   
Rosie and Ajax returned to their adopted room shortly afterward, keeping their silence all the way to the door.


	9. Chapter 9

Chapter Eight

The next morning, Ajax left Rosie in their room and made his way to the galley, managing to get lost around a few corners, but stumbling upon it at last in one piece. There he ate some of the food that had been lain out for the passengers. He watched them all as he did this, listening with interest to several conversations. Some woman was scolding her son for bothering one of the sailors, to which he was stagnantly insisting in his high-pitched, six-year-old voice that the sailor hadn’t minded. Two men were discussing their racing winnings in hushed voices. Neither had fared particularly well. In a far corner, though, a couple was talking about their plans for arrival. This Ajax started to listen to attentively, hoping for some clue as to where the ship was going and how long it would take to get there.  
“Sol’s so far off,” said the young woman, a heart-faced, innocent looking person with doe eyes and a chestnut plait. “I don’t know if I can wait.”  
“Any closer than that and your father will find us,” said her companion, who looked much sharper and taller than his lady. They both appeared to be no older than twenty. “But I promise you that the day we reach port, Elizabeth, I will carry you to the first temple I see, and we will be married.”  
“But that’s so far off,” she replied.  
Her intended laughed and continued to talk, but Ajax was already tuning them out. He had heard all that he needed to hear, and he wasn’t very interested in their sappy elopement plans.   
Sol was the ultimate destination of this boat, then. That young woman had been right; it was a long while till landing. Sol was down in Tellus, which was hundreds upon hundreds of miles south of Ardor. They were practically spanning the world.   
But Amber was one of the world’s largest ports, so he shouldn’t be terribly surprised. 

He returned to Rosie with a hunk of bread for her to eat, and she took it in silence.  
“I found out where we’re headed,” he said, sitting on the floor next to her.  
“And where is that?” she asked after taking a bite.  
“Sol, in Tellus,” he answered. She choked a little.  
“Tellus?” she said, after sorting out the piece of bread that had become lodged in her throat.  
He nodded. “A couple looking to elope were talking about it.”  
“Better there than hell, at any rate,” she said after pausing. “That’s the only thing farther south.”  
“I was trying to figure out how long it would take on the way down,” he said. “I thought about a month.”  
Rosie shook her head. “No. If we sailed straight it would take a month, but there are stops to resupply along the way, there are weather and wind issues, and there’s more. We’ll be on this ship for a month and a half at the least.”  
Ajax let out a low whistle. “Are we just going to stay through the end?” he asked.  
Rosie shrugged. “What else is there to do?”  
“We could get off,” he said. “In Coera, or wherever we stop.”  
“No,” Rosie said. “Absolutely not.”  
“But-”  
“Do you know what’s in Chrysos? Or Coera? Or even Tellus, for that matter?” she asked. “Do you know how you take over a country? You spin a web so fine that everyone gets caught and nobody’s the wiser. You get the authorities in your pocket to watch over the people, but then you get people to watch over the authorities, and soon you have a private army of informers, and they are everywhere. They could just be people looking to make a few pennies, but before you know it you’ve been caught and there’s nowhere you can hide, no one you can trust because for all you know everybody could be your enemy. And Master’s been spinning his web for almost two decades.”  
Rosie took a deep breath and rubbed the back of her neck. “No, we’re staying on this boat as long as we damn well can.”


	10. Chapter 10

Chapter Nine

They passed much of the journey with a similar daily routine. They would wake, walk, eat, and return. They had several conversations, but none were committal. It was more a way to ease the boredom than anything else.  
“What’s it like, being the governor’s son?” Rosie asked one day as they ate their little luncheon.   
Ajax considered this over his bite of food and then answered after swallowing, “Like being the pampered child of a rich man who makes decisions for a living.”  
“I see.” She smirked. “Has your family always been in power?”  
“Shouldn’t you know this?” Ajax asked. “You’re supposed to know everything.”  
“Don’t be ridiculous. Ardor was Hunter’s, not mine. I only stepped in,” she exhaled rather forcefully, “Occasionally.”  
Ajax sighed.   
“My father was elected governor years and years ago. But the governor is always one of the people in our circle. He’s always rich, pampered, and careless.”  
“So your people elect their ruler?” she said. “And does he stay for life?”  
“No,” Ajax said. “But he governs for twenty-five years before we re-elect. And if he dies, we re-elect.”  
“How long has he been governor?” she asked.  
“Fifteen years,” Ajax said.   
“So basically your whole life?” she asked. “Is it hard to live with such a powerful father?”  
Ajax snorted. “I’d ask you the same question,” he said.   
Rosie shook her head. “Master is not my father.”  
“But he raised you,” he said pointedly.   
“Only in killing and languages and charm. He didn’t think that I needed anything else. I taught myself the rest.”  
“What is the rest?”  
“The first time that I came across the gods was when I wandered into a temple after one of my first missions,” Rosie said, looking him in the eye, vey serious. “There were musicians and storytellers speaking about guilt through the legends. The first time that I learned how to think for myself was several years later.”  
Ajax was fascinated. “He trained you to be a vicious, mindless fiend?”  
“No,” she said. “He trained me to be an irresistible, invincible fiend that answered only to him.”

This one was the most popular conversation to have. But Rosie always stopped speaking before Ajax learned much. 

The days began to blur, and they began to walk more adventurously around the ship. When the weather permitted, they would stroll along the decks.  
Rosie seldom exchanged more than a few words with him at a time as they strolled. She seemed to be lost in thought as they walked about the ship, something that Ajax noticed but chose not to be bothered by. Instead, he enjoyed the sun and pretended that he wasn’t cramped aboard a ship that led him to a foggy, foggy future.


	11. Chapter 11

Chapter Ten

Another week of annoying silence plagued Rosie and Ajax. Or, rather, it plagued Ajax. Rosie seemed perfectly content with her lack of words and contact. Ajax rather resented her for it. The least she could do was provide the mild entertainment of just talking a little.   
One day, in about their third week, they made land at a port in Coera. It was a rainy, miserable day. Rosie was in her persistent reverie and Ajax was bored out of his mind.   
“Should we just get off here?” he suggested, hoping that she might agree. He was starting to feel the onset of claustrophobia, and he knew that he just needed a change of scene.  
She looked at him sternly.  
“Look, no matter where we go, we’re going to be followed and informed on and whatever,” Ajax said. “And I don’t think I can stand to be on here much longer.”  
“You can and you will,” Rosie said.   
Ajax threw his hands up in the air.  
“So we’ll walk willingly and gladly into what I believe you called a web of spies and informers, a world away from home, with no connections, no plan, barely enough money… I just want to know why Tellus, a place already overtaken and overrun, is preferable to Coera, where we at least might have a chance at not getting recognized.”  
Rosie pursed her lips  
“Because in Tellus we’ll have a bigger head start, I’m more familiar with the regime, and it’s a hell of a lot closer to the only place I can think of where we might be able to hide.”  
“And where is that?”  
“Hunt.”  
This took Ajax aback. “Hunt?”   
Hunt was a famous city towards the north of Bellua, but famous for its seclusion and strangeness. It was founded at the center of the Hunt forest, and the forest was wild and dark, prowling with who knew what and unwelcoming sentries, and rumored to be full of traps and other unpleasant things. Bad things happened to people there, and few ventured near. The city itself was supposed to be a thorny place, uncomfortable with outsiders, and in a world of its own.   
“Has Master not tried to take it or something?”  
“No. All of Bellua, remember?”   
“Then how is it safe?”  
Rosie sighed.  
“In every city, in every kingdom, there are spies that watch the figureheads and collect information from informers. Some spies watch the people for the figureheads, some spies watch the figureheads for Master. Nobody knows for sure which is which or who knows what. Except for one person.”  
“Master?” Ajax said.  
“No,” she said, looking at him like he was stupid. “Nobody, and I mean nobody can keep track of that many people scattered across the world. That’s the whole point. Not even the spies know for sure who their fellows are. But in every kingdom there’s a spymaster, and the spymaster reports to us.”  
“Us?”  
“Hunter and I.”  
“So, what, will the spymasters still report to you?”  
“Don’t be ridiculous. The first thing Master will have done is send messages on some very fast ships to let everyone know who should that we’re to be captured or killed or whatever he wants done with us. Probably killed.”  
“Then what?”  
Rosie smirked a little then. “Well, I happen to know a spymaster that won’t do that, at least not prematurely. Someone who doesn’t answer to Master, not primarily.”  
Ajax had to raise his eyebrows at that. “And how did you manage that?”  
“Master doesn’t appoint all his spymasters. Most of the time, he got one of us to do it for him. It was cleaner that way, we could find someone close to our figurehead and nobody would be the wiser.”  
Now it was Ajax’s turn to smirk.   
“Oh, I see. Let me guess, he’s an old, old friend of yours, right? Still sweet on you? Misses you a lot? I’ll bet he writes often. Do you reply?”  
Rosie actually laughed out loud at that, briefly, but loud.  
“Oh yes, all the time,” she replied.  
She laughed a little more.


	12. Chapter 12

Chapter Eleven

If anything happened for the last few legs of their journey, it was a deeper furrowing into their same old rut. They ate and slept, occasionally speaking, but certainly not about anything deeper than, “It’s lovely outside, isn’t it? Let’s take a walk.”  
The least Rosie could have done was to stop insisting on persisting nothing but their meaningless talk and monotonous routine. He ended up just lying in his hammock for hours at a time every day because Rosie said in their last two weeks that it would be better if they tried to limit their exposure to the other passengers on the ship. He would lie there in his hammock until he couldn’t stand it any longer, trying to imagine exactly what awaited them on shore. Sol was as busy a port as it got, and it was sure to be swarming with people looking to get on Master’s good side.   
The night before they were due to arrive (the captain came down himself to the galley to make the announcement) Ajax put his head down on their table and heaved a great sigh. He wasn’t entirely sure if it was of relief or of dread. Probably both.  
“We’re not going to stand a chance tomorrow if half of what you’ve told me is true.”  
“Probably not.”  
“They know which boat we took, they probably knew exactly where we’d be going as well.”  
“Yes.”  
“Wow, you really know how to make someone feel better, don’t you?” Ajax said in half a groan. The whole time he had just been sinking deeper and deeper into his own arms.  
“Tomorrow we’ll be strolling off this ship in broad daylight in front of a giant crowd. Bad things happen to people in crowds, especially people that don’t want to be seen by other people…” he was muttering to himself now, half-heartedly ranting to nobody, something he had grown accustomed to doing as of late. It wasn’t like Rosie ever listened.  
“Unless you’ve got any bright ideas, stop moaning,” she said.  
“Well, you’re not coming up with any bright ideas, yourself, your deadliness,” Ajax muttered into arms. “And it’s not like we can take out a lifeboat for this kind of emergency.”  
Rosie dropped her wooden cup. Ajax heard its dull thud against the floor.  
“Sweet goddess Arieda!” she slammed her hand onto the table. Ajax peeked out from his folded arms. Rosie was staring at him, open-mouthed.  
“Why didn’t I think of that?” she said.

An hour later they had gathered up their very short lists of things to gather up and had a plan formulated and in motion. There were seldom any sailors lurking around the bow of the ship’s deck after dark. Most of them were either in their bunks, or at the stern with the helmsman.   
That way, keeping in the shadows, Rosie and Ajax had managed to sneak undetected to the front of the deck and were standing beside a small rowboat lashed to the side. Now the trick was to get it in the water with minimal creaking. Rosie had taken the lead on that. Ajax figured it would be best to just watch. He had absolutely no experience with boats, big or small.   
After a minute, Rosie appeared to have gotten the worst of the knots undone. She started rocking the boat over the side. Thankfully, the pulleys holding it onto the side of the ship were well-oiled.   
Not without substantial heaving on Rosie’s part, the boat was over the edge. She motioned for Ajax to help her release the final ropes. He obliged as best he could. He found a rope and started tugging at it, trying to figure out how to loosen it. He noticed Rosie pulling out her knife and watched her saw at a few of the more stubborn knots that kept the boat tethered to the deck. He pulled out his own knife, the one he had kept on his person ever since their fight with Hunter, and he started hacking at the line, leaning over the boat rather precariously to do so.  
“Almost through,” he whispered to Rosie when he was. She looked up.  
“No, stop! Not that-”   
But that was when Ajax cut through what remained of the line. With a massive noise that sounded like a cross between a creak and a crack, the boat plummeted towards the water, taking Ajax with it.  
Whether it was the giant cracking sounds of the strained wood of both boat and ship, or Ajax’s shrieked swear, that got the sailors running in their direction, it was hard to say. Rosie’s accompanying oath after she understood what had happened probably hadn’t helped either.

Ajax hit the waves in a tumble. He flailed about, kicking and waving his arms madly, with the only three things he could register being that he was cold, it was dark, and he couldn’t breath.   
After a few terrifying seconds, though, he surfaced and gasped for air. He looked around wildly, seeing faintly the boat in the moonlight, looking (and he praised Arieda as glowingly as he could for this) undamaged. He heard a splash to his right, on the other side of the boat. After a few moments he saw it rocking, and a Rosie-sized figure clambering onto it. He did a few strokes to join her, though she needed to help pull him up for him to properly climb on and get out of the ocean.   
After they had both caught their breath from the effort to get on the boat, Rosie smacked Ajax hard on the back of the head.  
“You absolute idiot.”  
“Ouch!”

Rosie picked up the oars once the ship was considerably farther away, though still very much in sight, and started rowing after it. They took turns, constantly rowing so as to keep up with the hulking vessel. It was only at daybreak, once Rosie spotted land on the horizon, that they could stop following it. They would let the current take them the rest of the way, in its own sweet time, she said. Ajax nodded and settled in for a very uncomfortable nap.   
When Rosie had prodded him awake, they were a lot closer to the landmass they had seen in the night, and the sun was high in the sky.   
“How much longer?” Ajax asked, itching to get out of the cramped boat. His hair and skin felt encrusted with salt scum, and his clothes were still uncomfortably damp.  
“A few hours,” Rosie said, after squinting at the sun and shoreline in turn. “This current’s taking us a little further southeast than the main part of Sol. If we’re lucky, we’ll be there after sundown. Then they’ll have a job spotting us.”   
Ajax sighed and settled in to continue his nap. Not that he could sleep like this, baking in the sun and uncomfortable to the last.   
At last they got close and Rosie got out the oars again and started rowing them in. By this time dusk had settled on the horizon.

They rolled out of the waves onto a little patch of beach two miles or so down from the main port. It was still bustling in the dusk. Once they had both dismounted and made sure they had everything they had brought, Rosie kicked the boat back out into the surf.   
“That way, we were never here,” she said.  
Ajax watched as the tide pulled it back out, slowly but surely, into the deep. While he watched, the waves washed away the divot it had made in the sand, and the beach sank deeper into darkness.   
Ajax turned around to study the bit of Sol they had landed in. It was mostly quiet. There were a handful of small, scattered docks dotting the rim of the beach as it stretched the expanse of the town. Around this area, though, they mostly appeared to be housing fishing boats. There were what appeared to be a great number of huts and short apartments and inns lining the streets here, all made from a strange sort of dusty red brick. It was by no means a small village, but still it was nothing like the size of the still-bustling main city along the shore to Ajax’s left. And through about ten blocks of town made of the strange red brick, directly in front of Ajax, was a forest that looked thick and daunting, and had trees taller than he had ever seen in his life. And faintly, he thought he heard creatures he had only ever read about running amuck. The night seemed to gurgle with the sound of them. Mixed in with the gurgle was the occasional voice with an odd accent. He couldn’t see any people in the streets, but he could hear the handfuls in the alleys and inside their houses that hadn’t closed their windows. Many of them were speaking a language he had never heard before, that sounded guttural and tangled and confusing.   
That was when it hit him very violently that he was a thousand miles away from home.

Rosie was looking at him quizzically as he stared at his feet. They were a block or two into the outskirt of Sol that they had landed in, and still walking, although Ajax felt a lot more like throwing up.  
“Don’t you travel?” Rosie asked in a hushed voice, though he didn’t know why. The streets were deserted everywhere they could see. “Aren’t you used to this?”  
“We never really travelled,” he said. “Not since my mom died. And my sister.” He kicked the mucky, wet street at his feet in stride. He felt inexplicably angry. He had known they would be arriving in Tellus for more than a month, yet the information had only seemed to just sink in. “And I doubt that we will, now that your master has taken my father for some kind of twisted political scheme.”  
Rosie made an explosively exasperated noise. She was at her breaking point.  
“Gods be good, not this again,” she said through gritted teeth. “You need to grow up and start figuring out a thing or two. Like the fact that if Master had had his usual way, your ungrateful head would be on a pike!”  
“Yeah, and you would have probably been the one to do it, too! Except that day you decided to be nice!”  
Now Rosie was practically hissing at him and a second too late he realized that he had been shouting quite shrilly. He took a deep breath to calm himself down.   
“You can’t even deny it, you-” he started a lot more quietly, but Rosie was talking now, too, urgently.  
“Shut up, shut up, gods… Shut…” Her eyes were flitting around, scanning everywhere. Then she started at a fast walk with Ajax on her heels, turned into an alley, and had shoved a tall, gangly boy of about fifteen up against the red brick wall with an arm across his chest. Hard, from the looks of it, as his green eyes were as wide as saucers and his mouth was popped open in a silent cry of pain. His olive-toned face was draining fast of color, making his dark hair seem even darker.  
“You have five seconds to tell me who the hell you are and why the hell you’ve been listening in on us,” Rosie said, pressing her arm even harder on his chest.   
He cowered before her and was quivering worse than anything Ajax had ever seen.  
“I… I’m… My name’s Jason,” he spat out at last. Rosie leered closer to him. This only made him shudder harder.   
“And who do you work for, Jason?”  
“Pl… Please,” he practically whimpered. In response Rosie whipped out her knife and held it to his neck.  
“You’re going to tell me who you work for and how much you heard or I’ll just cut your throat right now, you hear?”  
“I don’t… Nobody… I just…heard.”  
“Spit it out your god-damned mouth,” Rosie said. Her teeth sounded gritted. She dug her knife further into Jason’s neck.  
“Mercy!” he shrieked, his eyes now firmly squeezed shut. “I don’t work for nobody! I just heard you talk and…”  
“Mercy is the last thing you’ll be getting you stupid sneak, you-”  
“Rosie!” Ajax cried. She turned to stare at him, shocked and angry. “Lay off, he’s just a kid!”  
“So am I!” Rosie said. “And for all you know he could deliver us right into Master’s hands.”  
She rounded back on Jason, redoubling her pressure on him. His eyes shut tight again.  
“What made you so interested in our little conversation?” she asked, her face inches from his.  
He didn’t open his eyes, but he whispered, “I work at the docks. Today there’re a lot of men asking around. Lot of people got scared. Said that they’re killers. Said that we were next. Then I hear you talk about killing.” He opened his eyes a little, so that he could squint a little at Rosie.  
“It wasn’t the first time I’d heard it, neither,” he said. “I heard they kill anyone that gets close. People disappear every day by the king, they say.”  
“So you’re stupid, then? Tailing murderers? Because you’re curious or some shit like that?”  
Jason didn’t say anything. He was shaking again.  
“This is pathetic,” Rosie said. “You’re pathetic.”  
“P… Pl… Please,” he said. He had his eyes closed again.  
“Got any family, Jason?” Rosie asked.  
“Oh for the love of the gods, what has this got to do with his family?” Ajax said.  
“Just… an aunt and uncle,” Jason managed to stammer out.  
Rosie looked at Ajax. “Now we know he’s seen too much, and we know nobody will miss him.”  
“Oh for all that is holy, holy gods Rosie, no!” Ajax said. He was practically crying from his exhaustion and desperation. He could see Rosie’s exhaustion, too, in the purple crevasses under her eyes as she turned to glare at him in frustration.   
“We can’t take any risks, Ajax! Not when one mistake means we’ll both be dead.”  
But this was where Ajax found he drew the line at Rosie’s behavior. This was where he felt most poignantly just how savage and inhumane she could be. He couldn’t stand her now, not when she was about to kill someone not even his own age because she had decided that everyone was the enemy. Jason was innocent and clueless. He knew that in his gut; he could see it written all over every fiber of Jason’s being.   
He wouldn’t let her slaughter him.  
“Holy- he’s innocent!” Ajax cried. Rosie moaned in intense frustration.  
“Fine!” she snarled. She threw down her knife and released Jason’s chest, though she caught his arm when he tried to scamper away.   
“We won’t kill him, not yet,” she said. “But we’re not letting him out of our sight, either. No chances.”  
Ajax heaved a great sigh of relief. Jason looked a little green, but at least he was breathing again.  
Rosie shoved Jason’s arm into Ajax’s hand.  
“He’s your responsibility, you gallivanting, stupid, weak-hearted hero, then,” she said. She rubbed her eyes and groaned with exhaustion. “I need sleep. You’re watching him to make sure he doesn’t try and run for it.”  
Ajax tried to protest but Rosie shushed him.  
“You’re the one that insisted he live. You’re the one that makes sure he won’t get us killed.”


	13. Chapter 13

Chapter Twelve

They spent the night in the first inn they found with a vacant room and set off again early in the day, before even the innkeeper had awoken. Rosie left a couple coins on their beds at Jason’s blanched look at the prospect of leaving without paying.   
Rosie had wrapped up a breakfast for them from the inn’s kitchen, and just as the first tendrils of dawn began lightening up the morning, they reached the outskirts of the city and started walking along the road that connected Sol to its far neighbor, Farren. Rosie had said they shouldn’t go near Farren if they wanted to keep their heads. Ajax agreed. After all, the king of Tellus lived in Farren, and his court was quite possibly the most dangerous place in the country for them to be. Instead they would bypass the city and continue on towards a port where they could find passage from Tellus to Bellua. After that, they would begin the long hike towards Hunt.   
Ajax knew he had spent just about the entirety of the second half of his summer on the ship to Sol, but he still was surprised at how much the weather had shifted towards autumn. The air wasn’t starting to nip yet, but the trees were beginning to paint themselves hues of yellow, orange, brown, and scarlet. Soon it would be quite cold.   
It was a long, dusty walk through the road that soon turned into a large, worn, wooded path. Jason babbled nervously about travelling all this time and Ajax tolerated listening to him for several hours before he decided to politely as possible tell him to shut it. Already, Ajax was wondering if he might start regretting saving Jason’s life.  
Then again, he wondered if this was how Rosie felt the morning after she saved him.   
All things considered, Jason seemed remarkably calm for someone who was essentially being force-marched far away from home by two people who had nearly killed him the night before. Idly, he tried to remember if they had even told Jason where they were going.  
He was pretty sure they hadn’t.  
He debated telling him, but ultimately decided against it. Rosie would probably get spitting mad about the whole affair again, and he had to admit, on the very, very slim chance that Jason was a spy, they probably shouldn’t tell him where they were going.   
Jason wasn’t a spy, though. Because honestly, if he were a spy, Ajax would have figured that he’d be asking a lot more questions than he was.

An hour passed of Jason looking increasingly miserable every step he took before Ajax took pity on him and tried to strike up a conversation  
“Do you think your aunt and uncle will miss you?” he asked, deciding to focus the conversation on Jason’s life. That way they could talk and Ajax wouldn’t risk giving away information that Rosie would want to keep secret. Because anything and everything was probably deemed top secret by her.   
Jason shrugged. “They took me in when I was seven. I didn’t like it there, though. As soon as I could, I left and found a job at the harbor. I’ve been working there for a few years now.”  
“So you don’t still live with them,” Ajax said.  
“No,” replied Jason. “I found my own place. I stay at a small room in a different inn. The landlady’s very sweet. She lets me live there for pennies. I still pop in and catch up with my aunt and uncle every once in a while, but I don’t think they would miss me much.”  
“Is that all you did? Work, eat, and sleep?” Ajax had an eyebrow raised and was now genuinely curious.  
“Yes,” responded Jason. “My life wasn’t great. Still. Could be worse.”  
“My life wasn’t too great, either,” Ajax said.   
“Where’d you live?” Jason asked.  
“Ardor,” Ajax said.   
Jason gaped.  
“How’d you end up in Fleaport off a rowboat?”  
“Fleaport?”  
Jason looked a little sheepish.  
“That’s what they call it. Not the best part of Sol, not the part that all the people from Ardor come to see.”  
“I didn’t come to see any part of Sol,” Ajax muttered. Jason looked intrigued.  
“Then what?”  
“It’s best if you don’t know, trust me.”  
Jason pouted, but didn’t ask again.  
Not for a full ten full minutes, anyway.   
Ajax ignored his questions.   
At last Rosie said, sounding quite irritated, “Master wanted Ajax’s father in its grip, and Ajax killed. I rescued him. We got on a ship to escape, and that was the one that took us to Sol.”  
Jason looked confused.  
“Why did they want you and your dad? Did you fight them? I heard about people that fought them. At least, I think it was them.” He shuddered a little.  
“Um, no, I didn’t fight them. Well, not really. That’s not why they took me.”  
“Ajax’s father is the governor of Ardor,” Rosie said.   
Jason actually stopped walking he was so shocked.   
“But you said your life was dull!” he cried. “You must be so rich! You must’ve had a palace or something! You could have anything you ever wanted, I bet.”  
“No,” Ajax said. “My father wouldn’t allow it. And it’s an all right life. Not exciting, though, when everything fun is apparently beneath you.”  
“But you are really rich,” Jason pressed.  
“Well, yes,” Ajax said, frowning and looking down at his feet as they walked. “But I’d honestly trade it all to have my family together again. Then maybe my father would let me have all this fun I’m supposed to be having.”  
“Your family’s not together?” Jason said.  
“My mother and sister were murdered about six years ago.”  
“Oh,” Jason said. He looked abashed at having broached the subject. But still he asked, “Why?”  
“Because of some stupid politics,” Ajax replied. “Why else?”  
“It was them?” Jason asked, saying the pronoun in a hushed voice as though they might be overheard.  
Ajax nodded.  
“We were sitting in our family parlor by the fire, and we were laughing. Then I heard a whoosh, and the next thing I saw was blood. My sister, Amber, was hit seconds later, right as she saw mom and began to scream. And then there was a third arrow, and it missed me, but damn was it close.”  
“Wow,” Jason said. He looked genuinely sad at his story. It was rather touching, really.   
“It was the worst day of my life,” Ajax said. “And I don’t even know why they did it. Well, politics, obviously. But why?”  
He had meant that last question as more of a rhetorical outburst than anything else.   
But then Rosie spoke.  
“It was Master’s first pass at Ardor,” she said. “He tried asking, bribing, everything casual. Your father refused. So then Master decided to send a message, to force coercion by giving your father nothing else to live for, and to send a message to anyone who would succeed him.”  
“But if that was the plan, why didn’t it work?” Ajax asked. “I thought Master’s plans never fail.”  
“It didn’t work because your father still had you,” Rosie said. “And Master decided to let your father stew for six years while he focused his efforts elsewhere.”  
“So basically sheer dumb luck,” Ajax said. He felt glum. This was very much not his favorite topic, after all.  
Rosie made a strange face.  
“How do you know so much about La- about their plans?” Jason asked, looking curiously at Rosie.  
She must have decided at this point that he wasn’t a spy, because she responded truthfully.  
“I worked for them,” she said.   
Jason seemed to shudder a little.  
“What?” she asked.  
“I just… Well…. You people scare me,” he said. He shuddered again. “I don’t know, maybe I just hear a lot of things because I work at the docks, but people swear that… I mean they’re probably making some of it up, but…”  
He swallowed heavily as he watched Rosie.  
“Bad things. That’s what they talk about. Really, really bad things.”


	14. Chapter 14

Chapter Thirteen

“Should we sit for lunch?” Rosie suggested around midday. She was gesturing towards a shady area next to the road that looked like a nice place to sit.  
They unwrapped the food Rosie had stashed away at breakfast and tore into it hungrily. They were ravenous from half a day of trekking under the sun that still managed to shine hotly through the cover of the trees. After some lazing around and gulping of water from a nearby creek, they began walking again.   
The rest of the day passed in a blur of idle chatter and aching feet. As the sun began to set, Rosie stopped walking, and peered towards a spot that was outside the path.  
“I think I see a place where we can spend the night,” she said in response to, Ajax assumed, his and Jason’s puzzled expressions.  
They followed her as she slipped through the trees, and soon discovered the place to which she had been referring. It was a dumpy little hovel, but it had a door with a functioning lock and a floor marginally softer than the forest ground. It was quite a ways off the road, but they would have no trouble finding their way back the following morning.  
It was nestled on a bay that seemed to extend far out to the sea and looked quite tranquil.  
Rosie charged the boys with the task of building a fire as she crept through the trees in search of food. She returned with two skinned rabbits, and fashioned a spit on which to roast them. 

When the food was cooked, Ajax found he wasn’t really in the mood for talking. Fortunately, Rosie seemed to be warming up to Jason. Ajax just sat and ate quietly as he listened to her inquire about Jason’s life in Sol.  
“Do your aunt and uncle live far from you?” she asked.  
“They live on the other side of town,” he said. “But they’ve been talking about moving somewhere else.”  
“Somewhere like Farren?”  
He shook his head. “No, further than that. They were thinking about going north as far as Chrysos. My uncle always said that there were good jobs in Chrysos.”  
“And no bad people?” Rosie asked. She was smirking.  
“Um. I think so. I mean, I don’t know if that’s why. But it could be,” Jason said. “They call it the ‘land of the free,’ don’t they?”  
“They have no king or governor, true,” Rosie said. “But instead, they elect aristocrats to make decisions for them. It’s horribly inefficient, in my opinion. They spend more time arguing than getting things done.”  
“But still,” Jason said. “And the markets there are good. People are always richer in Chrysos.”  
“Ah, of course, after all Katalina is their patron goddess,” she said.  
“Must be nice to be the goddess of wealth and prosperity,” Jason said.  
“I knew that bard left someone out!” Ajax said.   
“What bard?” Jason asked.  
Rosie rolled her eyes.   
“The one on the ship we took here.” She turned her eyes on Ajax. “And he also left out a few other gods, Norf, the god of war, for one.”  
“Yes, the patron of fair Lacera,” Ajax said. Jason sniggered.  
“I heard Lacerans are as dumb as the rocks they use to club animals to death with.”  
Rosie looked indignant.  
“Don’t insult the gods,” she said. She looked deadly serious. “Especially not when we need their blessing the most.”  
“Relax,” Ajax said. “I’m sure they have better things to do.  
“So you had a bard on your ship?” Jason asked, effectively changing the subject. Was he good? I’ve heard a lot of them. They like to come to all the inns and play for the sailors and people. Only a few are good, though. Most of them sound horrible. There was this one who sounded like one of the sea lions dying, I swear. And he was playing this dirty lute with a broken string, and he wouldn’t leave.”  
“Oh, they never do,” Rosie said.   
“Well, I felt a little bad for him, so I gave him a gold coin, and once some of the men had a few too many he made a decent penny. Can’t really tell good from bad, that lot.”  
“No,” Rosie said. “They can’t.”  
“Well, he’s still getting around, I think,” Jason continued. “And he’s doing better than some of the good bards from what I hear.”  
“I can imagine,” Rosie said. She looked away from Jason at that.  
“I mean, there was one that was quite good, from what I could tell. He sang some great songs, and had made up a few of his own. Those weren’t about the gods though. Those were about the king.”  
Jason looked sullen at this.  
“He never comes by anymore. No one needs to ask why.”  
Rosie sighed, sounding exasperated.  
“Is that the only thing you ever talk about?” she asked. “I feel like every conversation with you is turning into some kind of guilt parade for me.”  
Jason looked taken-aback.  
“Sorry,” he said. He sounded like he meant it. “It’s just… never mind.”  
Rosie finished her bit of rabbit then, and threw the spit onto the fire.  
“After you both finish up eating, we’re going to bed,” she said. “It’s getting late.”   
Not needing another invitation to rest his tired feet, Ajax stretched and entered the little hovel cautiously, with Jason at his heels. Rosie smothered their fire and took water from the bay to cool the ashes before following. There, they eventually all went to sleep.


	15. Chapter 15

Chapter Fourteen

It seemed that as soon as Ajax was closing his eyes he was being woken again. But this time it wasn’t by Rosie’s insistently shaking his shoulders in the morning. No, this time it was by Jason’s shriek.  
The next thing he knew, he had a strong hand clamped around his mouth and a knife at his throat.   
His muffled shriek matched Jason’s.

“There’s three,” said the gruff voice belonging to the man that had Jason.   
“They only want the girl and the one from Ardor,” replied the one that seemed to be having a hard time keeping Rosie in his grasp. He was gasping with the effort  
“Which one’s that?” the man holding Ajax hissed.  
“I can’t bloody well see in this stinking hut, now can I?” the one with Rosie said.  
Then Ajax was being forced out of the hut’s door, with Jason and his muffled moans following him out. His heart was beating a mile a minute.  
They must have been overheard. Gods knew where or by whom. All Ajax could tell about these men was that they weren’t as stupid as the guards on the ship, they were armed, and they wore kerchiefs that covered the lower halves of their faces.  
“Which is it?” grunted the man with Jason, holding him fast as he squirmed and struggled.  
They both squinted for a few seconds.  
“Blond’s from Ardor, nobody’s from here that’s got that hair,” Ajax’s captor said. Ajax cried out in pain when the guard seized a tuft of his hair in his fist for emphasis.   
“Then start tying him up,” said the man holding Jason. The man then grinned. The blade of his knife caught the moonlight.  
“Say goodbye to your friend,” he said. Ajax felt like he wanted to throw up. His blood was pounding in his ears and gnashing like ocean waves.

But then a knife hit the man holding Jason squarely between the eyes. And after that Ajax was released as Rosie tackled the man holding him to the ground. Ajax scampered away towards a rather shell-shocked Jason, turning around suddenly when Rosie cried out in pain. The man’s subsequent shriek of agony, though, was enough to reassure Ajax. A minute more of slashing, dodging, and wrestling, and Rosie had the man’s knife in hand. She slit his throat in one swift motion.  
Ajax found Jason shaking badly, still right next to his now-dead captor. He seemed torn between being unable to stop staring at Rosie, and being unable to stop staring at the knife hilt right between his captor’s eyes.   
“Are you alright?” he asked Jason quietly. Jason made no move to respond.   
Some yards away, Rosie got to her feet.   
“Ungh,” she said, sounding as though she were in pain. She walked over to where the boys were sitting and sat down next to Ajax. She took a deep breath or two before leaning down and tearing a strip of fabric from the hem of her dress. Then, with her left hand and her teeth, she attempted to tie her makeshift bandage around the new, long gash in her right forearm. As far as gashes went, Ajax didn’t think it looked all that deep, but it was certainly bleeding profusely.  
“Here,” he said, taking the fabric and tying it as tightly as he could around the wound. Rosie sucked in a breath through her teeth as he did this.  
“I can’t believe I let that ass cut me. Gods, I’m out of practice.”  
Red was already seeping into her makeshift bandage.  
It seemed odd to Ajax that she could bleed. He had almost forgotten, it seemed, that Rosie was human. It was odder still that she would consent to bleed for him, for his protection. After all, he hadn’t even met her when she had decided that she wanted to rescue him. He hadn’t known her name when she had dragged him out of imprisonment right under her master’s nose. He had barely gotten a word out of her when she was fighting off Hunter, all because her decision had gotten her caught.   
There was nothing he could think of that would provide sufficient explanation for her behavior. Absolutely nothing.   
That, he realized suddenly, was why he was so very afraid.

After Rosie had recovered slightly from her injury, she stood up.  
“Alright, back to bed. I’ll keep watch.”  
Ajax looked at her like she was insane.  
“We should be on the move, we can’t stay here, it isn’t safe!”  
“I think I know better than you what is and isn’t safe!” she snarled back. “Get. In. Side.”  
Ajax and Jason complied wordlessly. 

Going back to sleep was easier said than done. Every time the wind rustled the leaves of the trees, or an animal went scampering by, Ajax bolted out of his sleepy haze and broke into a nervous sweat.   
He tried to shut his eyes, to remind himself that it was just a squirrel, or the wind, but it was no good. He had managed to fall asleep and stay asleep for an hour, maybe two or three, though it couldn’t have been more since it was still dark, before the sound of a twig snapping nearby made him jump nearly ten feet in the air.  
Jason was still snoring softly. Even in slumber he seemed aggressively polite.   
“Sleep,” he heard Rosie whisper. He turned to see her just sitting, her back against the wall of the hovel, staring morosely at the door. She held her knees against her chest. She hadn’t moved since Ajax had last closed his eyes.   
“Can’t,” he said.  
“Try harder.”  
Ajax sighed. “I can’t.”  
She scoffed.   
That did it. He was angry now.  
“No, really Rosie, I can’t. This is the second… no, third time someone’s tried to kill me this month, and I’m just a little bit frazzled, a little bit afraid that it won’t be the last time that someone comes at me with a knife. For all I know, the people that will kill me are a mile off.”  
“Nothing bad will happen to you on my watch, I assure you.”  
“But that’s just it,” Ajax said.  
She rubbed her forehead with the back of her hand. “What is?” she asked. She sounded tired.  
“I don’t even know why you’re watching me in the first place. You rescue me, you fight for me, you stay with me. Why? You said it yourself, you’d be praised for taking me back. And I can pretty much figure out that, at least by now, we’re in this together. But I don’t know who you are, not really. I don’t know if I can trust you, still. I want to trust you. Believe me, I do, even if it’s just so I can sleep. But I can’t.”  
Rosie pursed her lips. She stared at the door. She said nothing in reply.  
“Then you could at least sing me a lullaby,” Ajax muttered. He laid back down and pitched himself around, trying to get comfortable.  
About a minute after he finally settled, he heard her exhale, long and deliberate.  
“It was because I missed you,” she said.  
Ajax immediately sat up, though he was a bit perplexed.   
“I’m positive I’ve never met you before in my life.”  
She looked at the ground.  
“No. Six years ago, I missed you.” She turned her eyes to meet his, dead serious. “And I never miss.”  
Horror started to trickle into his gut then, and prickle at the back of his neck before he fully, consciously comprehended what exactly her words meant.  
“No,” he said unconsciously, right as an image he’d buried deep, deep down into his vault of repressed memories resurfaced again and flashed before his mind’s eye: the twang of the arrow hitting the desk, his glance to its source. His seeing, in the far stretch of the grounds, on the edge of the forest, a girl with black hair ducking behind a tree and running from the scene.  
The meaning of her words fully, consciously dawned on him then.  
“You…” he started, but he didn’t know what to say. He wasn’t even sure if he wanted to get as far away from her as possible or throttle her.   
“You know I didn’t choose that assignment,” Rosie said. There was flicker of something in her eyes, something like remorse.   
But that didn’t matter to Ajax. He felt worse than betrayed, he felt violated.  
“You killed them,” he said. Saying it out loud only made crisper his horrible memories and feeling of utter desecration. “I can’t believe…. I’ve let you drag me around, you were my… I…” He felt flipped upside-down, he was so upset. “You murderer!” he decided, focusing on the one point that to him was clear as day.  
Rosie looked upset, too, though. She looked angry.   
“I may have let the arrows fly, but don’t think for a second it was me that murdered them, don’t you dare!” she said. Her eyes were flashing dangerously.   
“You may not have decided to do it on your own, but nobody was forcing you to do it, either!” Ajax said. Rosie’s eyebrows shot up.  
“They might not have killed me if I hadn’t, but the punishment was severe enough for failing to kill you as it was.”  
Ajax made to retort but Rosie cut him off, cheeks flushing in her anger.  
“What was I supposed to do?” she said. “Risk everything, go against everything I knew, every lesson I had learned, the very way I was raised, just to spare the lives of two people that I had never known, perfect strangers that meant nothing to me?”   
“I would have,” Ajax said.   
“Then I salute you for your honor and stupidity,” Rosie replied. “But that was by no means the first time I had killed on Master’s orders, and by no means the last.”  
But Ajax had to shake his head in wonder at this.   
“Then why the hell did you care that I was sentenced to death?”  
He had a point, and he could see that she knew this.  
At length she spoke.  
“I’ve always been a gifted archer. Even at eleven, my aim was better than most men at twenty-five. There was a reason Master chose me and not Hunter for that job, even though, aside from a few missions here and there, Ardor was his assignment. I never, ever missed my target. Ever. And I was strong enough by then to use a powerful bow, probably one more powerful than anything you’ve ever touched. I’ve always been strong.” She was looking at him, hardly blinking, very serious, though still a little pink.  
“Trust me when I say that whatever saved your life that night was not by any means a mistake on my end. And it certainly wasn’t any abnormal cleverness on yours. It’s only the gods themselves that could make an arrow that I let fly miss.” She was still staring at him with her piercing blue eyes. “And I missed. I missed, and you survived, which could only mean that the gods themselves did not wish you to die on Master’s orders. They have something planned for you, I know it. Maybe even something as great as defying Master. So when I heard you had been taken captive and sentenced to die… well, I rescued you.”  
“But what could you possibly want, rescuing someone who might take down your master?”  
Rosie had her eyebrows raised again.  
“You think I was rooting for him? You think I would let that man have the world as his plaything?”  
“But you would be queen, or chief thug, have palaces raised for you, command an army…” Ajax said. “You had everything to gain from his gains.”  
“That doesn’t mean I liked what the world was becoming,” Rosie said, picking at the floor beneath her. She sounded bitter. “It just wasn’t right. It wasn’t a good world to live in. And once he’d had his way who knew if he would even bother keeping Hunter and I around. He doesn’t like useless things, Master.” She sighed. “What Jason was talking about today, that’s what happens wherever we go. Fear, oppression, and more fear. And when the fear and oppression envelops the world when the last country falls, it will be like living in a nightmare with no escape. A constant pair of eyes on your back, a constant fear of being decreed too revolutionary, carted off, and killed discreetly, but by no means quietly. Even I would have to watch where I stepped. I don’t want that. Nobody wants that for the world. It just took me a long time to figure it out.”  
“And meanwhile you just kept on being his killer.”  
She flashed him her lethal stare. “Yes.”  
Then she said in a cool, terrifying tone that made Ajax shudder just a little bit, “Now for the love of all the gods, go the fuck to sleep.”


	16. Chapter 16

Chapter Fifteen

As soon as the sun was up the next morning, Rosie rose as well, rubbing her eyes after her nearly sleepless night, and leaving the boys snoring in the hovel. She set about collecting kindling for a fire. Soon, after a methodical construction of a suitable scaffolding of twigs and dry leaves, she had a blazing flame to warm the chilled morning air. After she made sure that it was not going to spread beyond its circle in the sand, she wandered around in search of something to eat for breakfast.   
She returned with another rabbit. As started roasting, Jason emerged from the hut, rubbing his eyes and sighing with fatigue.  
“As soon as we eat, we’re leaving,” Rosie said.  
Jason didn’t respond, he still looked a little shell-shocked. 

He did accept the bit of rabbit that she offered him when it had finished cooking. He ate it quietly.   
While he did this, Rosie shot him a stern look, presumably to remind him not to run off, then went into the hut, presumably to drag Ajax’s snoring self out.   
She returned dragging him by the collar. He looked as though he were half-sleepwalking.   
“Right,” Rosie said, pushing Ajax down across the fire from Jason. “Eat, then we’re going.”  
Ajax groaned. His head hung in his hands. He made no move to touch the rabbit. Rosie clucked her tongue and tore off a hunk of her own.   
Ajax appeared to have nodded off against his arms.  
“You’ll regret that this afternoon,” she muttered at him. He let out a snore in response.  
“Where are we going?”  
Jason’s question cut through the air quite suddenly.  
Rosie raised her eyebrow in response.  
“I swear, all I know is that people’ve tried to kill me twice and that I’m more scared than I’ve ever been in my life. I swear. That’s it.”   
He was trembling slightly, partly in his earnest and partly in his terror. “It’s not fair.”  
Rosie heaved a great, irritated sigh. “You know, bringing you in the first place goes against just about every rule I have-”  
“All I had to do was just go home, but no, I had to go find out who you guys were…” Jason’s lip was trembling.  
Rosie gritted her teeth. She seethed, but Jason looked very genuinely upset.   
She stomached about two minutes of his trembling and his small whimpers before she took pity on him.  
She huffed and stamped her foot, crossing her arms and feeling equally cross.  
“Hunt.”  
Jason looked up, seeming very surprised indeed. “What?”  
“We’re going to Hunt. And no, I’m not answering any more questions. Kick Ajax. We need to be on the move.”  
Jason looked stunned. He glanced at Ajax. Then back at Rosie.  
She looked irritated again.  
“Must I do everything myself?”

Five minutes later, she had smothered the fire, pitched the three bodies into the bay, made sure they had everything they had brought with them, and seized Ajax by the ear. She wasted no time hurrying them on, and after a minute of gasping and noises of pain, Ajax found he was awake enough to match her brisk pace. 

They didn’t stop to eat that day, though Ajax’s stomach was rumbling so loud by dusk that he was sure it would give them away to anyone in pursuit.   
An hour or so after sunset, he and Jason were too tired to keep going. They collapsed in the first clearing they reached. The second Ajax lay down on the spongy, moss floor, he was asleep.   
Rosie collapsed as well, but her eyes stayed open, and she was still sitting upright. She pulled out her knife. 

Ajax woke slowly, allowing the light to wash over his face before opening his reluctant eyes.   
Their clearing was actually quite nice in the early autumn sunlight. The trees were strange to Ajax, but the moss was the same, as was the grass. As he sat up, he noticed Rosie slumped against a tree on the edge of the clearing, eyes closed. Her knife appeared to have slipped from her hand sometime in the night. She looked sound asleep.  
Ajax hesitated to wake her. She would probably be mad at him. He didn’t know what for, but he had a feeling she would be.   
Jason snored softly beside him.  
“Rosie?” Ajax said, hesitantly. He remembered at one point someone had told him to never wake a sleeping dragon.  
She stirred a little, then her eyes snapped open and she jolted.   
“Happy morning,” Ajax said. She rolled her eyes, looking a little irritated. She stood up. She stretched. Jason began to stir as well.

“Where are we, exactly?” Ajax asked once Rosie appeared to have regained her bearings. Jason was now sitting up.  
“We must have wandered off the path,” she said. “My fault, I was so tired.”  
“We can’t have gone far, right?” Jason asked.   
“No,” Rosie agreed. She started walking a bit deeper into the wood that surrounded the clearing. Jason took it upon himself to help and started off in the opposite direction.  
A few moments later he exclaimed.  
“Look! Pomegranates!”  
He appeared a moment later, holding one in his hand.  
“That means we’re close to Farren, right? They have orchards of them that go on for miles!”  
“Yes,” Rosie said.   
“There are more this way,” Jason said. He started walking in the direction that he had indicated.   
Ajax watched Rosie, not sure if he should follow. She didn’t seem to think that what Jason was doing was particularly dumb. He started walking off towards Jason. She began to follow.  
She was looking around, searching for better bearings, most likely. It was strange to have her in the back of the group, instead of leading them at her hectic pace.   
The pomegranate trees grew more numerous the farther Jason led them on. He seemed to be getting excited now that he seemed to be making progress.   
They walked along, and as they went Ajax kept his eyes peeled for any semblance of the path. Every time the sun showed through the trees in a clearing, Rosie would study it, muttering to herself about the time of day and its position. Ajax could have sworn he heard her muttering at the clouds about how useless they were and how much better the stars were. He tried not the laugh. It wasn’t hard. He was equally concerned about them not knowing which way to go.  
Towards the middle of the day, though, he could have sworn he heard voices in the distance. Lots of them. Jason seemed excited. He started walking faster and faster in their direction, and it was all Ajax could do to keep up. Rosie had to follow him, too, to keep them both still in her sights, though she kept telling Jason to slow down, then stop. But, most likely because he was trying to impress her, the idiot, Jason paid her no heed. Then it occurred to Ajax that Jason hadn’t really been made aware of the full extent of their danger. It occurred to him right as he realized that Jason had led them out of the trees and into a crowd of people running along a dirt road, following what appeared to be some kind of parade.  
“It’s the festival!” Jason exclaimed. Ajax tried to pull him back into the trees and cover, but they had already been caught up in the massive crowd, and the second he made to move against the veritable current of people there were protests and shouts and threats against him by the hordes, and people swearing that they would remember him and end him. And Jason had already been swept away far ahead, and it was all Ajax could do to not get trampled. He heard Rosie’s colorful swears behind him.  
That was when he fully realized the panic swarming in his gut.

The closer they got to the main square, the louder Rosie was swearing, the more ahead Jason seemed to be getting, and the more Ajax was very seriously evaluating his life choices.   
“Shit shit shit shit shit,” Rosie was saying. The crowd was so boisterous that nobody really noticed. Although there was one father that had a small child on his shoulders that threw her a rather dirty look. The child was clapping his hands excitedly, though, and didn’t seem to be actually listening to Rosie.   
The square was in sight. The road appeared to turn from a cobbled path to a nicely tiled plaza, a wooden stage set up on the far side with a throne and a variety of smaller chairs. The palace of the King of Farren rose taller than all the buildings in the distance, surrounded by its famous orchards. It would have been beautiful if Ajax hadn’t been too busy wishing all manner of curses on Jason and ducking his face behind anyone or anything he could find. He didn’t know what came next in this festival, but there were bound to be spies of all shapes and sizes in their midst, not to mention all the just plain nosy people that might see his blonde hair and blue eyes in the sea of olive skin and brown features and wonder if that information might be worth a pretty penny. At least Rosie and Jason didn’t have to worry about sticking out like a big, blonde tower.   
There was already a sizeable crowd amassed before the king. All interspersed were jugglers, dancers, and vendors selling every conceivable way a pomegranate could be served. There were dancing circles by the bards and the men playing their instruments. People were making merry, setting up more booths, making their rounds. The closer Ajax got, the more he could make out that the festival wasn’t just contained in the square, but that it stretched down every road, expanding wherever it had room to grow, presumably across the whole city by dusk. Already there were booths along the sides of the main road and the noise just increased in volume with every new step that Ajax took. He tried to comfort his nerves by reasoning that there was no way anyone could pick out anyone from this crowd, it was too big, too loud. He couldn’t even find Jason anymore, there were so many people buzzing in front of him. Though that was a worry for later.   
Still, every now and again he would feel someone’s eyes lingering on him. Sometimes he whipped his head around to find the people that stared, but they were too quick and too subtle. Some of them probably weren’t even spies, just people that had never left the northern part of Tellus before and had never seen coloring like his. Or maybe nobody was staring, nobody was paying him much mind beyond a shallow glance. Yet by now he felt that perhaps it would do better not to give strangers the benefit of the doubt.   
He felt a hand latch onto his arm like claws then, and he nearly screamed outright before seeing that it was Rosie’s. She pulled him down so that his ear was more in line with her mouth and asked him where the blubbering buffoon had gone. She had to talk rather loudly over the crowd.  
He just shook his head in response and her look of irritation could have withered many a flower. She kept his hand and tugged him deeper into the square. People seemed to be tittering as they passed and pushed their way through their circles. Many spared more than a seconds glance in their direction. Some with curious eyes. Others with hungry ones. Ajax tried to ignore the unease that had been clawing at his insides ever since they got caught up in this crowd, but it kept multiplying tenfold the closer they got to the rigidly disciplined guards surrounding the king’s place. It curdled particularly when the lingering eyes on his head now were coming from a few choice people sitting to the left of the king.   
“Rosie…” he said under his breath, and her grip tightened on his arm. Her nails were cutting into his skin but he barely even noticed. Jason still was nowhere to be found. At this point Ajax was wondering what exactly would happen if they just left him behind. But Rosie would never allow it. Not when he knew so much compromising information about their plans and routines.   
Ajax’s eyes searched even more frantically for any sign of him. They continued to yield nothing until- no wait that was just another boy about Jason’s height. Ajax was cursing so loudly in his head it almost drowned out the sounds of the crowd. Almost.   
In the corner of his eye, Ajax thought he saw two men from the King’s platform get up and leave. Oh boy.   
Shit shit shit holy gods above where in the blazes was Jason they needed to get out of here ten minutes ago where could he possibly have gone off to they must have circled through most of the crowd by now.   
Ajax tried to make himself calm down. Those men could have been leaving for many reasons.  
Except that he knew somehow, felt right in his gut, that those men were not just leaving for any old reason. They had both been two of the ones watching him. Neither of their eyes had broken contact with his head, of that, he was sure.   
Holy hell.  
And then, relief flooded him to the core. Because there was Jason, craning his neck to get a better view over the swarm surrounding him. Ajax yanked Rosie through several groups of people cursing at him for stepping all over their feet and pushing, and finally caught Jason’s eye and snatched his wrist.  
“I swear to all things holy, Jason, if you do something like this again I will personally-!”  
His anger was cut off by a sharp, stabbing pain in his arm. Rosie was squeezing it so hard he thought her nails had broken his skin. He turned around, biting down a yelp.  
It was one of the King’s men. He was talking to Rosie. He had her hand in his.  
“- I know the King would be delighted to host you,” the man was saying. “And your… friends.”  
Rosie had on a rather weak smile. “Of course,” she said.   
She hadn’t relinquished her vice grip on Ajax’s arm.   
The man motioned for her to follow, which she did after giving him a few steps’ head start.  
“What?” Ajax asked in a whisper.  
“Where are we going?” Jason added.  
“Apparently King Theres has invited us to his feast.” She looked rather ashen-faced.  
“What?” Ajax repeated.  
“I don’t think he’s heard about us yet, I think it just might be because… well, I guess I did him a favor.”  
“You did the king of Farren a favor?” Jason sounded awestruck.  
“Sure,” Rosie replied.  
Ajax desperately hoped this wasn’t a trap.


	17. Chapter 17

Chapter Sixteen

Pomegranate wine was served and all the guests drank merry toasts to Leon, the patron god of Tellus. The room was deafening and both its walls and high, vaulted ceiling were draped all around with all manner of burgundy, orange, and forest green tapestries, tablecloths, and curtains. The food was plentiful, hot, and delicious, and after only one course the sturdy oak tables were already stacked high with platters of venison, poultry, and produce fresh from the fields.   
The feasting room in this palace was absolutely enormous. It sat about a hundred guests with only the most minimal of cramping. A merry fire was ablaze in the behemoth fireplace behind the king’s table, which was raised up at the head of the room and sported his queen and handful of sons and daughters. All the royal family was laughing, whether at each other, or at one of the many jugglers that had been let in from the streets for putting on some shows in exchange for a few cuts of meat from the tables. Each juggler was dressed in bright red from head to toe, and many had bells on their caps. The bells added soft chimes to the din of the lords’ baritone shouts and the ladies’ tittering.  
Jason was staring all about, looking torn between wonder and terror. His eyes were enormous, taking in everything around him. He barely touched any of the food heaped on the platters before them, as though it all would be snatched away from him if he dared eat off a golden plate.   
Ajax tried his best to get the kid to eat something, but eventually gave up. He didn’t have much of an appetite, himself. Though he drank a little more wine than he should have, truth be told. Every time he thought about all the people seated near the king he felt sick. The wine helped him forget about them.   
Rosie had looked a little green herself, at first. She seemed a bit stonier than usual, retreating into her own goblet. Thinking, most likely, along the exact same lines as Ajax was. But she must have decided it was worse to not join in any conversations than to do so, or perhaps her wine had gone to her head a little. Ajax wasn’t actually sure how much she had had, come to think of it. But now she was chatting with one of the guests beside her. Something about the old king of Tellus. How he had been rotten before his death. It all sounded like terrible brown-nosing on the part of this lower noble.   
Ajax grabbed a cut of meat and tossed it on the floor for one of the dogs that had started nuzzling at his ankles. Might as well have someone enjoy the food if he couldn’t.   
Sometime during the fourth course the king stood, the din muted down to a titter. He raised his glass and lifted his head and said in a deep, resounding voice, that managed to sneak into every nook and cranny of the room, “Let the gods look down on our feast and know that this bounty is all their doing, and that we know this to be true. Let Leon bless our fields again and Arieda keep our noble shores. Let Jesper guard our flocks, and Norf keep us from war. And in thanks let us all raise our cups and plates in thanks and prayer, for when this world was created, the gods intended us to give them thanks and to be their prizes!”  
“So it is!” the rest of the room declared as they lifted cups and plates in unison, and it echoed around the hall. Ajax figured that the king must have to make this speech every year.   
The room then resumed its previous occupations, many of its occupants now red-faced and laughing. The jugglers were turning cartwheels on the tables, now, and people were shrieking with delight.   
Ajax had to recoil when one went whizzing past him, all of a sudden, and stopped, and stooped to tip his cap to several of the lords at the tables. The lords all chuckled and each flicked him a golden coin, though the one directly across from Ajax held his just out of reach and asked for a song or story for his money. The juggler grinned, bent down, and scooped five whole pomegranates from a platter in front of him. He started to juggle them, first in a circle, then he began to toss them through the air and snatch them up again in a mesmerizing pattern unlike anything Ajax had ever seen.   
“Alright, good sir. I’ll take you up on that request,” he said to the lord. “There’s a reason us folks from Farren like our pomegranates so much,” he began dramatically, and loudly. The fruits still deftly whirled around in the air as he spoke. “See, long ago, long before any of your greatest grandparents were even born, when the first king of Farren had a stone house and a village, he lay on his deathbed, ready to set sail for the great Abyss and leave us behind with naught for an heir and leader. Well, this land is rich, that we know, and the gods knew how great we were meant to become. So Leon persuaded fair Malinora to let our king live past his time, so that he might at least leave us with a proper heir. But Malinora was haughty, she did not want to be taken for a fool by us mortals. So when she visited our first king, she told him that the gods had granted him a longer life. She said that for every day he could present her with some kind of jewel or treasure from the earth, he would be able to buy himself another day alive. Our king agreed, and immediately felt his sickness leave his bones. He rose with renewed strength and life, and set out to continue to found our fair city. He had no real treasures, he knew, and Malinora knew as well, but he was determined at the very least to have his one day count.  
“That night, when Malinora came to visit and to collect her payment, though, he had a plan. For, he had happened across a certain tree in the wood, and there he had found his lifeline.   
“So Malinora crossed his threshold and he bowed to her, and then presented her with a single pomegranate, saying that surely his debts must be paid for a year with this gift. Malinora took the husky red shell of the fruit and was furious. And she threw it to the ground in her anger. But when it struck, out poured all its seeds, like hundreds of glistening rubies. Malinora was amazed.   
“Then our good king gave her another pomegranate, and she had to accept it. He planted pomegranates all around in celebration of his triumph, and those trees became the first trees in our great orchards. And he lived out his days until we thrived and he had finished his work. He left us with his heir and son, and then his son’s son after that to continue his great and true legacy, which continued up till very recently, might I say, and at last sailed to the Abyss, where Malinora welcomed him with a feast of his pomegranates.”  
A great cheer swelled at their table at the conclusion of the tale, and many people raised their cups and downed them in one while praising their noble fruit.   
The juggler let all the fruits artfully fall from his clutches one-by-one, then, and bowed deeply, collecting the coins as they came. He smiled at Ajax with a swarthy grin before cart wheeling away, off to another audience with more coins and favors.   
Rosie watched him go with a frown on her face.   
“What?” Ajax asked her quietly.   
“I don’t like this. Too many people. Too much chaos.”   
“Are we in danger?” Jason asked in a very quiet voice. It was the first time he had spoken for the whole feast.   
“I don’t know,” Rosie said. “And I don’t want to find out.”


	18. Chapter 18

Chapter Seventeen

Ajax had half expected to be grabbed as the feast continued on, and when that didn’t happen, he continued to anticipate that moment, right as they made their way out the door with many staggering guests alongside them. The feast had gone on for hours. It was dusk by the time Rosie had led them out to make a clean exit.   
They all but ran out of the city, back into the forest, once again on the proper path that would take them to the western coast of Tellus, and where a ship would be able to carry them to Bellua, from where they would be able to make their way to Hunt. 

They plowed their way along the roads of Tellus for the entirety of the night and well into the day, running on adrenaline, fear, and little else. They would hesitate for only short times to scavenge for berries or other quick sources of food. They stopped to rest for only a few hours when they felt as though they were on the verge of collapse.  
It was again dusk by the time that Rosie finally let them stop at an inn on the edge of the Almonde Canyon.  
Despite being more exhausted than he had ever felt in his life, Ajax was in awe when he saw the vast red cliffs that lined the formation. He had never seen anything like it. It was like a crack had been split right through the country, extending on and on.   
Rosie paid the innkeeper and let him lead them all to their rooms. They all collapsed onto their beds, whose humble straw felt more comfortable than the softest feather bed Ajax had ever laid on.   
He wasn’t sure for how long they all slept, but he awoke in the mid afternoon with his stomach rumbling so loud he wouldn’t have been surprised if he woke up the whole inn. 

He wandered to the main room of the inn, following the intoxicating smell of food, and he sat down at the table that Jason and Rosie appeared to already have commandeered. The innkeeper’s wife served him a warm stew, which she had already done for his two companions, and which Ajax welcomed.   
“I can’t believe that you’ve never seen the canyon before,” Jason said after waiting for Ajax to take a few bites.  
“It’s not much of a surprise,” Rosie responded, looking at Jason. “Have you ever seen Mt. Fire?”   
“No,” he admitted. “I know you have, though.”  
“I have,” she replied.  
“Is there anywhere that you haven’t been?” he asked.  
“Probably not.” She grinned. She began twirling her hair around her fingers.  
“So you’ve seen the auroras of Glacia and the sands of the Svensali Desert?” he asked.  
She nodded, still idly twirling her hair.  
“What are they like?” he asked.  
“Beautiful,” she answered. “Someday you’ll see them, too.” She flashed him a smile. He beamed back. 

Ajax said nothing, too ravenous to want to give his mouth another occupation.  
“We’ll stay here another night,” Rosie said, suddenly.  
“Why?”  
“It’s already almost dark.” She looked at him. “And we need rest.”

Ajax closed his eyes for what must have been the thousandth time that night. He simply could not will himself into slumber, no matter how tired he knew he should be.  
With a resigned sigh, he threw his blankets off and got out of the bed. He didn’t even bother to put on shoes or a robe; he just walked out of the room. He decided to explore the canyon at night. A walk would tire him out, he reasoned.   
He padded softly past many doors, but stopped when he heard a voice. He immediately recognized that it belonged to the innkeeper’s wife. He was about to keep walking, when he realized what she was saying.  
“- and now Jess says her husband’s gone,” she was saying in a whisper to, he assumed, her own husband. Ajax felt a slight chill at the words. A gruff voice answered her, but it grumbled so low and quietly that he could not distinguish the words.  
“I don’t give a damn ‘bout not talking,” she answered, her whisper sharp. “He’s gone, she said. Then she told me someone saw him pitched to the pigs. She swears it. He was so cut-up it was hard to say, but they swear it was him, she said.”  
Her husband mumbled a reply.  
“I told him it wouldn’t do no one any good, not now, not ever. And look where it’s got him. But he swears he knows the old king was murdered, so he has to talk it up and start something up.” She paused. Then she spoke again, so quietly now that Ajax had to work hard to listen. “He swears he saw him, King Leopold, eyes bugged open one morn, stone dead. Silver knife in his heart.”  
Her husband began to grumble another reply, but Ajax didn’t listen to the rest. He walked the remaining length of the hallway fast, distancing himself from the words.   
They still haunted him, though. He kept circling back to something Rosie had said. I did him a favor, I guess, when referring to the current king.   
The late king of Farren had been found stone dead, with a silver knife in his heart. Of course it had been Rosie, how could it not have been. The knife that she still carried was silver, too. Ajax bet that the silver knife that killed King Leopold had been an almost exact copy. He shivered again.  
At least it explained why King Theres had invited them to dinner. Rosie had paved the way for him to achieve the throne.  
Ajax felt a tad stupid, really, on how that had not occurred to him before. It would only have been Rosie or Hunter that would have done something so bold as to assassinate a king. And he knew that Rosie had been here before. And he had been told about the old kings over dinner.   
His feet carried him halfway out the door before it occurred to him to stop walking. He stood there, one foot outside the inn, the other within it, wondering if he still wanted to walk outside.   
Eventually he decided to go through with the stroll. He knew that he wasn’t going to be able to sleep any time soon, and the crisp air tantalized him. He walked slowly down the pathway from the inn to the edge of the canyon, pausing to admire it in the darkness. The world appeared to go on forever in its shadows, straight through the horizon. It was awe-inspiring.   
He walked a few steps further when he saw a shadowed figure sitting on the perimeter of the canyon, its feet dangling over the edge.  
His curiosity overpowered him. He walked down to the crude fence that kept him at a safe distance from the edge of the canyon and squinted at the figure. It was only after this scrutiny that he realized that it was Rosie. He suddenly felt a wave of dizzying fear, hand in hand with a flash of hatred. There she was, a murderess in the flesh.  
The innkeeper’s wife’s words rang in his head, “Stone dead, with a knife in his heart.”  
Then Rosie turned to face him, twisting her torso to look at him properly. Her legs hung over the edge of the canyon, swinging a little. She looked him up and down. Then she turned back to stare at whatever she had been previously been staring at.   
Ajax stood there, awkward and feeling quite helpless.  
Well, she had seen him.   
He ducked under the wooden fence and sat down beside her, though keeping a careful distance between them.   
“Can’t sleep?” he asked, when a few minutes of silence passed. She did not respond. He couldn’t take it, the quiet. It made him feel even tenser than before, and made his head spin. “Neither can I,” he said.   
And still there it was, the persistent silence. The whole situation seemed quite backwards to him, who was pushing conversation, and who wasn’t. But there was the silence again, that made him even angrier than he was, and that made it harder for him to see Rosie in anything other than red.   
“You killed the old king,” Ajax finally said. He was sick of finding something else to say, to beat around the bush a little first. It was the only thing he could think about, anyway.  
“Yes,” she said. “I killed the old king.” She was looking at her hands, a small, grim smile fleeted onto her lips, then was gone. She made no move to say anything more.  
“What do they do with the revolutionaries, the people who try and fight?” Ajax asked.  
Rosie pursed her lips. “Do you really want to have this conversation again?” She looked at him, eyes narrowed. “Haven’t we already established how terrible I am? All the terrible things I’ve done for a terrible cause?”  
“Not really,” Ajax replied.  
“Well, I’m sick of talking about it,” she said.  
“Then think of something else to talk about,” Ajax said. “I can’t take the silence.”  
Rosie took a long time to exhale before she spoke. She pointed towards the other side of the canyon. “In an hour or so, the sun will rise there, and it will be one of the most beautiful things you will ever see,” she said.   
“I’m not in the mood for beauty,” Ajax replied.  
“People travel here from ages away to see it, spend their life-savings on the trip, sometimes, and again, here you are, here, and ungrateful.” Rosie looked at him. “You asked me to think of something else to say. I did. And you’re ungrateful. Let’s talk about faults, then.”  
“I’ve never travelled because it was my mother’s favorite thing to do. We did go places, when I was small, not that I remember much. Amber loved travelling, too,” Ajax said.  
Rosie sucked in her breath. “Fine,” she said. “What do you want me to say? Do you want me to weep for them? Do you want me to pay for them? Do you want me to struggle my way down to Malinora’s Abyss and steal them back for you, upon pain of death and eternal damnation?” She was staring at him, pink in the face with anger, and her lower lip was quivering ever so slightly. “What?”  
“I don’t know,” Ajax said. He was looking at her, too, equally angry.   
Her teeth were gritted, her voice seemed thick, and she was practically shaking with rage. “You don’t think I know that I killed them? That my hands ended their lives, silenced their beating hearts? That if it wasn’t for me, they would still be alive, running around, and looking at the prospects of long and rewarding futures?” A few tears streaked down her cheeks, and she made no move to wipe them away or hide them. “I may have done a lot of terrible things, things that I could never un-do or make up for, but you really don’t have the right to throw them in my face every time you get pissy.”  
Ajax was aghast, “I do not-“  
“Either find me a way to fix it, or stop using it as a shield,” Rosie said. “I’m tired of this. I’ve saved your life more than once, I risked everything to get you out and then I lost everything. I don’t want to regret it.” She wiped a final, stray tear off her cheek and looked annoyed at the evidence of her own emotion.  
He didn’t know what else to say to that. So the ensuing silence didn’t bother him, as Rosie in turn said nothing more.  
The more time passed, the more Ajax replayed parts of the conversation in his head, and the more he felt a small pinprick of guilt emerging in his gut. He was being unfair to Rosie, at the very least because she was right. She had saved his life. More than once. That thought left a bad taste in his mouth, but he found he had to swallow it all the same.   
It was only when the darkness was starting to fade on the horizon that he realized that he wasn’t really angry anymore.   
“Will this sunrise really be one of the most beautiful things I will ever see?” he asked.   
Rosie nodded.   
“My father always said that a volcanic eruption was the most beautiful thing in the world,” he said. “Will it be more beautiful than that?”  
Rosie looked at him. “There cannot be two more different things.”  
“Why?” he asked.   
“A volcanic eruption turns the world into ashes. The beauty distracts you from its power and destruction, the awe it inspires is contrary to every instinct that you posses.”  
“So?” Ajax said.  
“But with the sunrise comes a new day, a chance to be reborn as a better person and to correct your mistakes from the past. It’s a new chance with better prospects.”  
He shrugged, though he found he couldn’t quite bring himself to reply. He wasn’t in the mood to start arguing again. Instead he silently watched the tendrils of pink snaking their way out of the horizon. They were soon chased by purple streaks, and then by almost every color.  
When the sun broke through and its light first touched the red canyon, Ajax felt as though he were watching something bigger than the dawn of a new day. He was watching the entire world rising from its slumber to pursue its life. It was indescribable.  
He remained there for ages, drinking in the raw, beautiful, luster that the coming of the sun brought the world. He was barely conscious that Rosie was watching it, too, right alongside him. 

Yes, he conceded. Nothing could ever compare.


	19. Chapter 19

Chapter Eighteen

The following day, they set out west to the edge of Tellus. Almonde Canyon was close to the edge of the country, but it was still two days’ walk to reach a decent port.   
They were able to stop at another inn at dusk the night that they set out. This one had several travelers staying, so nobody gave them an extra thought, except perhaps the kindly innkeeper, who looked a bit doubtful about three teenagers sharing a room. Nevertheless, he took Rosie’s gold and had an attendant led them to the dining area and fed them a large dinner after their day of weary travel. During this time, they said little and watched the people that sat at adjoining tables.   
A woman was feeding her young children and arguing with her husband over the route that they should take back to their home. A cloaked pair at a table in the corner and mumbling to each other in a tongue that Ajax didn’t recognize. He watched them with interest for quite some time before he heard Rosie say, “Bellugean.” He looked at her curiously. She sighed. “They’re speaking in Bellugean. It’s the common tongue in Lacera.”  
Ajax looked at her open-mouthed. She appeared to listen with more attention, then. “And they’re talking about that man’s wife. In case you were wondering.”  
“You speak that language?” Jason asked.  
“A little,” Rosie said.  
“You know everything, don’t you?” Jason said.  
Rosie laughed a little. “No. I definitely don’t.”  
“But you know what they’re saying,” Jason said, indicating the table with the foreigners. “And you always know everything.”  
Rosie shrugged and returned to her meal.   
When they had finished eating their largely silent dinner, the innkeeper led them to a relatively large room that was furnished with several comfortable-looking, mismatched beds. Full and exhausted, they fell asleep almost in sync.

 

In accordance with their recently established routine, they rose, ate and left early. After thanking the innkeeper, they went on with their walking as the sun slowly peaked in the sky.  
“Lunch?” Rosie suggested, already gravitating towards the shade of a handful of trees on the side of the road. Ajax and Jason nodded.   
She unwrapped some of the provisions that the innkeeper had given her in the morning, and they began to eat.  
In between bites, Ajax winced as he rubbed his neck. “I think that the sun is starting to burn me,” he said.  
“It will pass once we finish this journey and are able to stay in the shade on a boat,” Rosie said.  
“And how long will that shade last?”  
“About a week,” she said. “It’s not far, just inconvenient.”  
“And then we spend countless weeks trekking north, right as winter starts setting in,” Ajax said.  
“I’ll be glad to do that. It’s not as though there aren’t any inns along the way. We won’t be spending a lot of nights in the cold.” Then she looked a bit more cheerful. “Actually, I think we might get horses.”  
Ajax’s mood considerably improved at this. “Horses would cut the time it would take in two, at least,” he said.  
“Horses!” Jason cried. “I’ve never ridden a horse!” He seemed torn between excitement and apprehension.   
“I’ll teach you,” Rosie said. “So long as you are patient with yourself and kind to the poor animal.”  
“Don’t worry about that,” Jason said. “Every once in a while, there would be boats with horses for somebody’s business. They would always put me in charge of keeping them calmed. They always seemed to like me.”  
“Good,” Rosie said with a smile.   
Feeling considerably more uplifted, Ajax stood up when he had finished eating and suggested that they get going as soon as possible.   
So once again, the walking began, full of Jason talking excitedly to Rosie about riding horses, and her cool, patient replies and answers to his questions. 

As the sun was beginning to set, they finally came upon the relatively small port town. Rosie led them straight to the marina and inquired about the next ship to Bellua.   
The man that she had addressed informed her that there would be a ship leaving at daybreak that morning. She asked if she might be able to procure room for three passengers and batted her eyes. He assured her that there would be no trouble and told her to come right at sunrise to arrange their quarters. She thanked him happily.   
After this brief exchange, Ajax and Jason followed Rosie to yet another inn and she ordered them to go to sleep at once. It would be an early morning, and they needed their rest.


	20. Chapter 20

Chapter Nineteen

They rose promptly and were able to pay their way into a small, four-hammocked cabin on the handsomely sized vessel. It was cramped but welcome to their tired feet. Now all that they had to do was wait until they landed, buy some horses, and be on their way. Hunt suddenly seemed much closer to Ajax.   
An hour after the sun had risen, the ship cast off, and they were on their way. They each sat in the room, enjoying the last of their food, and, in accordance with their newfound good mood, telling jokes.   
“Have you heard the one with the young girl and her mother?” Ajax asked, still choking on his laughter from Rosie’s story about the priestess, the porcupine, and the bard.  
They both shook their heads and he began, trying his best to quell the giggles that refused to die down.  
“Well, a young girl of about twelve was begging her mother to go to the fair across town, but the town wasn’t the place for her to be walking alone, and her mother and father were busy. But the girl begged and pleaded and finally her mother gave up and decided to quiz her on what she should do if a bad man cornered her.   
‘Tell me, darling,’ said the mom. ‘What should you do?’ and she said, ‘Well, if a bad man cornered me, I’d tell him to drop his pants.’  
The mother was aghast. ‘And then?’ she asked urgently, hoping that she had somehow misheard her daughter.  
‘And then,’ said the daughter, ‘I would lift my dress.’ And you can both imagine the mother’s reaction.  
‘But, darling!’ cried her mother. ‘Why would you do that?’”  
Ajax had to stop for a moment to beat down his chuckling at the punch line to his own joke.  
“And then, she said,” He laughed again, “‘Because I can run faster with my dress lifted than he can with his pants down!’”  
Rosie and Jason burst into laughter.   
“That’s a good one,” Rosie said. “Are the jokes always so scandalous in the upper echelons of Ardor society?”  
“That one was tame,” Ajax said, grinning. “The children of the wealthy are easily tired with the good and proper.”   
“But don’t you have better things to do?” Jason asked.  
“No,” Ajax said. He swiveled his head to stare directly at Rosie. “It’s your turn,” he said.  
Rosie threw up her hands. “Alright,” she declared. “This one will be short, though.” She dramatically cleared her throat.  
“How did Queen Vanessa slice an apple?” she asked. Jason and Ajax shrugged.  
“She broke its heart!” cried Rosie. Ajax laughed. “Clever!” he said.  
“Who was Queen Vanessa?” Jason asked.   
“A famous Queen of Coera,” Rosie said. “She was that tramp of a queen that started the War of the Broken Heart. The gods didn’t like her, so they split the country in two and drowned her and her supporters. Or so says the story,” Rosie said. “Coera used to look like a heart, a lot of people say. But now half of it is missing, where Queen Vanessa lies in her watery grave.”  
“Wow,” Jason said. Then he laughed. “I get it!”  
Rosie smiled. “Good,” she said. “Because now it’s your turn.”  
So Jason began to tell a funny story that he knew, and they continued the entire day like that, pausing only to get some food from their galley. 

 

Perhaps he had grown accustomed to a long boat travel, but the next week went by in an incredibly easy blur to Ajax. He was content to sit, eat three meals a day, and share stories to pass the time. Rosie had recounted some encounters that were so close to disastrous that they couldn’t help but be amusing.   
“That reminds me of when I was sent to Guan in an attempt to sway their crime leaders,” she said after a joke about the particulars of an organized league of wrongdoing. Jason begged to hear the story, and she complied (though Ajax could tell where she might be leaving out or censoring details). Jason did not seem to catch on that there were more sinister methods of persuasion that she might have used.  
“But in the end, I did not need to dig out any risky tricks,” she finished. “I caught the man being paid-off by the chief of the town, and it was all the blackmail that I needed. He had to make a difficult choice of allowing himself to be alleged with Master or being bludgeoned to death by his own crew, following his own rules.” She smiled.   
Jason was listening slack-jawed and astounded, with a thoroughly enraptured Ajax beside him. As it turned out, Rosie was quite a good storyteller. “Tell me again,” Jason said. “When you were hiding in the ceiling.”  
“Yes,” she said. “I knew that he frequented that location, and I meant to drop down and trap him, but…” she trailed off. “I slipped and nearly cost myself everything. I was hanging from a thin wooden beam, praying with what strength could be spared as I hung there longer and longer for them to not even bother to glance my way. I must have waited an hour for his accomplices to leave and I was barely hanging on. Just as they closed the door, my fingers gave out and I fell with what grace I could muster. He heard me, but I made him forget that I wasn’t supposed to be there…” she trailed off, pursing her lips at the memory.  
“How?” Jason asked. Rosie grinned wryly.  
“The classic Rosie way,” she said, now looking at him with her wry grin. “Every secret you’ve ever had will spill.” Jason exhaled in an impressed huff.  
Ajax tried not to imagine exactly what she meant. No matter what path his mind went down, he found that he’d rather not press.

Thus the days passed, and sooner than Ajax would have realized, they were ushered out onto a gangplank and on dry land once more. There were quips of a few foreign tongues here and there, and the entire marina was bustling with fishermen, sailors, and salesmen.   
Rosie asked them if they felt up to travelling, but Ajax gave a steadfast negative. He was drained and still woozy from being at sea, and he could tell that Jason shared this predicament, though he was trying very hard to push through it. So Rosie dragged them to an inn and threw them into a room. There, she sank onto the edge of a bed and rubbed her eyes compulsively. She was tired, this Ajax now saw. He idly wondered if she had had any more sleepless nights. 

The next morning, as promised, Rosie bought them each a horse. They each took the reigns of their own, and led the animals into the road.  
After their walking had sufficiently led them out of the range of sight of those in the town, Rosie found them a glade shielded by trees just away from where travelers might see them. Then she began to teach Jason how to ride.  
Ajax kept to a tree stump and tried not to laugh too hard. Rosie might have been highly skilled, but she was an impatient teacher, and Jason was a struggling beginner. She had practically thrown him onto the poor horse’s back and began correcting grips and positioning with an unforgiving fervor.  
“Rosie,” Ajax said after she snapped at Jason that he was gripping the mane incorrectly for the fourth time in a minute.  
“Don’t get picky about what I teach, you know as well as I that we need to get going should certain people try to catch up to us,” she said, turning to face him.  
“But you’re not going to do any good teaching if you snap impatiently at him,” Ajax replied. He then turned to Jason and said, “You’re doing a good job. Keep up the good work.”   
Jason looked relieved. Rosie pursed her lips.   
“Should I teach him?” Ajax said.   
“No,” Rosie replied, turning back to Jason. “Don’t bother getting up, I’ll do it.” She waved her hand at him from behind her back to reinforce this, using a gesture that indicated that he should sit down and stay there. Ajax shrugged and complied, settling to watch.  
He had a hard time stifling his laughter as Jason managed to fall off his horse several times. He never appeared to be hurt, so Ajax felt no guilt at being thoroughly amused at Jason’s flustering clumsiness with his horse. 

However, by the late afternoon, Jason had enough handle on his horse that Rosie felt confident in his being able to ride on the road. She mounted her own horse, clearly eager to get on with their journey, but Ajax stopped her before she went trotting into the road.  
“We’re not going to get any measurable distance behind us before we will have to stop for the night,” he said. “Let’s take advantage of actual beds and actual supper while we still can.”  
Rosie thought for a moment, looking ready to reject his words. He braced himself for a long, cruel and logical reproach, but instead she nodded and said that he was right. So, he followed her and Jason back to the inn where they had stayed the previous night. The innkeeper was very kind in re-accommodating them, and he had one of his employees take their horses to the stables to be kept fed and happy until the time the following morning that they chose to depart. 

The next day, they rose early and breakfasted heartily. They packed their newly purchased saddlebags with provisions, warmer clothing, and a new knife apiece, and they took their leave. Out on the road, they kept their horses at a gentle trot and continued at that comfortable pace until the sun was quite high in the sky and they decided to stop for a light lunch.  
As Rosie pulled out three apples, some bread, and some cheese, a question occurred to Ajax that he had never thought into much. He supposed that he had just been used to everybody around him having money to freely spend, but just now he was wondering at how exactly Rosie came to acquire her gold. Did her master pay her? He doubted it, and this made him all the more curious.   
“Rosie, how did you come across the money that you’ve been spending?”  
She looked a little confused at this question, which was understandable considering they had been discussing an entirely different topic only moments before. But she shrugged. “We just have gold lying around for use on missions. Master is a rich man from all his blackmailing and takeovers. Before I went to retrieve you, I made sure to have more than enough to get us both to Volcno, if necessary. Much more. Just in case. It will run out soon, but we’re well enough on our way that it shouldn’t be much more of a problem.”  
“Huh,” Ajax said. He wondered what would happen once they got to Hunt, though.


	21. Chapter 21

Chapter Twenty

Jason woke up that morning quite content. The forest was nice and serene, with a pair of lively little birds chirping and the soft morning light diffusing across the leaves. He sat up, shivering a little at the chill of the air, but gratefully he saw that somebody (he suspected Rosie) had already stacked some large branches and small twigs for a fire. He supposed that she wouldn’t mind terribly if he were to start the fire without her. After all, its intention was to keep them warm, and right now he was cold.   
Humming a little sea tune to himself, he began arranging the smallest twigs in a little a-frame on a patch of ground that was clear of fallen leaves. He looked around them for some means of ignition when he saw the stones that he had seen Rosie use coupled together near the largest branches. He picked them up and attempted to knock them together, as he had seen her do, and tried to create a spark.  
After a few minutes, the air around him was filled with a burnt smell, and he had managed to produce a few sparks, but he was unsuccessful in his attempts to light his twigs.   
“What are you doing?” He heard Rosie ask behind him. He blushed and felt a little guilty.  
“I… I was trying to light the fire,” he said, still blushing. He heard her quick steps crunching leaves nearer and nearer to him. She knelt down next to him and laughed a little.  
“Well, you have a nice setup to light, at least,” she said, looking at him and smiling. He smiled back.  
“Will you show me how to light it, then?” he asked.  
She laughed a little more and took the rocks from him. Holding the more golden of the two between her index finger and thumb, she struck it against the grayer of the two and produced a large spark. Jason grinned and held out his hands for the rocks so that he could try.  
“You just have to hold it tight and after that it takes practice to get the spark right where you want it,” she said. Her smile had not faded in the slightest. It felt nice to know that she liked his company.   
“Okay,” he said. After a few attempts, he had successfully ignited his kindling.   
“Good,” Rosie said, brandishing the rabbit that she had caught while he had been struggling. “Let’s eat.”

Ajax stirred shortly after the rabbit had been wafting a delicious smell of cooking in his direction. Rosie laughed at him as he sat up, and teased him about this display of hunger. He muttered that it wasn’t exactly abnormal to want breakfast and she laughed some more just for the sake of laughing at something.

That day they wandered through their wooded path, rambling about the dirt road, aiming to go northward, but not really paying attention to what was in front of the hooves of their horses. It would be a long journey, but the novelty of it had yet to wear off in Jason’s mind. He was very much excited to leave his empty home and to forge a life anew with his recent friends. 

Just as the sun grew high in the sky the following day, the forest began to thin. Soon they would be crossing some plains with nothing to cover their camp but trust in the stars. Rosie was a bit nervous about having enough food without the hunting ground of the forest, but after lunch, in a break in the trees, they saw that several farmhouses dotted the hills in the distance and that there was a forest in sight beyond. The far-off trees surrounded a handful of tall, proud peaks.   
“What mountains are those?” Jason asked. Ajax looked to Rosie to hear the answer.  
“The Twin Volcanoes,” she said, “Plus their surrounding range.”  
“The tops are in the clouds,” Jason said.   
“Don’t be too impressed,” Ajax said. “Mt. Fire must be twice as large as these.”  
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Rosie replied. “I daresay it’s smaller.”

It would take them several days to cross the hilly plains, but the food was no scarcer than it had been in the forest. The horses enjoyed stretching their legs with a faster pace, not to mention being able to stoop down to graze on as much grass as they pleased while their riders sat down to a picnic of a rare prairie rabbit, or some bread and cheese that a kindly farmer’s wife had given them. They did not have to do much besides ask in order to get some food. Their clothing was ragged-looking as it were from their days in the forest, and all three were in desperate need of a bath.

On the third day, when they had come almost three quarters of the way across the plains, it was Ajax’s turn to get them some dinner. As he watched Ajax ascend the front stoop of the handsome house, Jason felt a swooping feeling in his gut. It occurred to him that he was alone with Rosie, and that she was smiling at him.   
“It’s getting colder,” Rosie said, losing her smile as she looked off towards their destination.  
“I know,” Jason answered. “Do you think we have enough clothing to keep warm?”  
“We’ll manage,” she said. “We won’t be travelling far into winter.”  
“It will be nice to see some real snow,” he replied. “Back at the docks, the snow doesn’t stick to many places, and where it does stick, it’s dirty and not wanted.”  
“It doesn’t stick too much in Hunt, either,” she replied.  
“Why wouldn’t it?” Jason asked.  
“The trees are so thick that they become a second roof to the people of the forest. The highest drifts will only reach my knees.”  
“Wow,” Jason said.  
“I know,” she said, looking at him with the hint of a smile on her face. She returned to studying Ajax. The last streaks of orange light emanating from the setting sun were making her eyes dazzle. Jason took time to study the shade of blue that he had always found so captivating. Her copper-toned face glowed around them, only emphasized by her flowing, raven-black waves. She was more than just beautiful, he thought. She was a goddess.


	22. Chapter 22

Chapter Twenty-One

The next day the looming line of trees looked so very close. If they hurried, it was quite possible that they could cross the line and into the forest.   
At lunch, they finished off the last of their food and hastened to the edge of the trees. By nightfall, they had achieved it.  
Rosie went out to find some dinner for them and returned with two squirrels. “The rabbits are getting harder to find,” she said, sitting down on a rock to skin their game. She told Ajax to make a fire.  
“Is a knife your favorite weapon?” Jason asked, watching her interestedly.   
“No,” Rosie replied. “They’re handy to throw, but if I had better choices, I wouldn’t bother picking one up.”  
“Then why do you always seem to use knives?” Jason insisted.  
“I only used them because Master liked the idea of leaving behind an insignia. He liked the fear it would inspire.” Rosie shrugged.   
“Do you like swords better?” Jason asked.  
Rosie made a face. “They’re worse than knives. I’ll only pick up a sword if I absolutely have to.”  
“Maces? Axes? A bow and arrows?” Each weapon Jason suggested received a shaken head.   
“Okay, if every weapon in the world were put in front of you, and you had to kill somebody, what would you choose?” Jason asked.  
Rosie smiled evilly. “An Ithacan scythe.”   
Jason looked confused, but Ajax let out a low whistle. “I’ve always wanted to learn how to use one of those,” he said.  
“I’ve heard about those somewhere,” Jason said. “But I’ve never seen one.”  
“They’re these massive scythes, thin staffs with a huge, wicked, curved blade at the top. And the bottom is filed to a point.”  
“That sounds nuts,” Jason said, his eyes big.   
“It’s a gorgeous invention,” Rosie said. “Best weapon to fight with ever.”  
“It’s very hard to master, though,” Ajax said. “I heard about a man who cut his own hand off while spinning one around.”  
“I’m sure that’s happened to many people with swords, too,” Rosie said.   
“I’ve never heard of that happening to someone practicing with a sword,” Ajax said. “But I hear it’s quite a common injury with that scythe.”  
Rosie shrugged. “Honestly, I’ve never thought it particularly difficult.”   
“When did you learn it?” Jason asked.  
“Well, the first time I used it, I hadn’t even seen it before,” Rosie said.  
“Did Master just hand it to you and say, ‘have at it,’ or something?” Ajax asked.  
“In a way,” she replied.   
“Then what happened?” Ajax asked.   
Rosie grinned. “Well, I was trained with just about every weapon as a young girl,” she said. “By the time I was seven I knew at least the basics for hundreds of them, and I was actually quite good to begin with. One day, when I was in our little fighting ring, Master was instructing me on how to parry with a sword. He ran me through one drill so many times that I was nearly driven mad by boredom. I just stopped even paying attention to him. He didn’t like that.” She shook her head, still grinning.   
“So he yelled at me, and I yelled back at him that I didn’t see any point in learning the same basics over and over again. Then he said very sternly, in almost a growl, ‘If you don’t repeatedly learn the basics, you will never wield anything like someone who has devoted their life to it, and those people will kill you before you can whine another word.’   
“I wasn’t impressed by this speech, or at least, I wasn’t until I’d calmed down,” Rosie said. “It was probably the only time I’d ever see him express something other than superiority. But at the time I stuck out my lower lip and said, ‘I could beat them anyway.’ And then Master raised an eyebrow in his superior manner and replied, ‘As you wish.’ Then he called for Hunter to come to the ring.   
“I was a little scared, I’ll admit. But I wasn’t going to reconsider my words. So I stood my ground and didn’t show any sign of wavering. Master seized my arm and carted me over to the table of weapons. He instructed me to pick one that I had never learned the basics on. He said, ‘Now, let’s see how you will like basics after this.’  
“I remember staring at the weapons for what felt like an eternity. They all looked intimidating, big, and very hard to handle. I felt some unease settle in my stomach. But I had to show up Master, just this once. So after a long examination, I decided to grab the weapon that looked the most elegant. So, I grabbed the Ithacan scythe. Although, then, I didn’t know what it was called. But the second I picked it up, I knew I liked it. When Hunter arrived, he found me poised in the ring, holding the scythe. He raised his eyebrows, but Master told him to take his own scythe and spar with me to teach me a lesson. I remember that Hunter shrugged and picked one up casually, and that annoyed me. He wasn’t going to beat me. I refused to let him.   
“Before he’d even taken a proper stance, I was there and swiping it at him. He blocked me easily and was smiling this irritating smile. It was showing me how effortless it was to defend against me. I practically growled at him and his smile. He had me seething. But it was a hard weapon to use. It wasn’t cooperating for me as it was for Hunter.  
“But after a fair amount of fighting with it, the scythe started to feel more comfortable. Master had always told me that when I had finally mastered the sword, it would feel like an extension of my arm. For the first time I knew what he meant. I swung this way and that and it felt smooth and compliant. I flipped it and twirled it a bit, and it felt natural. Then I went for Hunter.” Rosie’s grin broadened at the memory.   
“He never saw me coming,” she said. “One second I was swinging like an expert, the next he was on the ground, I was on top of him, and I had the blade at his neck.” Her eyes glazed over a bit and she gazed at some trees, caught up in her thoughts.   
“What did Master say?” Jason asked.   
“He was a fair amount shocked, though he tried to hide it. But then he recovered enough to send Hunter away and to run me through a basic sword fighting drill a thousand times.”  
“A thousand?” Jason gasped.   
“It sounds worse than it is. It really only took me an hour straight to do them all. But I couldn’t move my arm the next day, it was so sore,” Rosie said. “But having proved Master wrong and beaten Hunter at combat was worth every bit of pain and aggravation.”  
“I’ll bet,” Ajax said.

Six more days of their routine passed: breakfast on leftovers, walk, hunt for and eat lunch, walk, hunt for and eat dinner, sleep, repeat.   
Rosie broke out their new, warm clothing and was starting to save a little food every night. By morning, the meat from the previous night would be frozen, and the leaves on the ground of the forest were frequented by delicate patterns of frost. Over the next few days, Jason commented that whenever he breathed out, his breath looked like white smoke, and Ajax laughed and said that in Ardor, he and his friends would call this volcano weather, when their governesses would let them outside to play, because they looked like the smoking peak of Mount Fire when they exhaled.   
That night Rosie sent Ajax off to collect firewood. As Jason began helping her unpack their sleeping mats and blankets, she asked him, “Did you ever go to school, Jason?”  
He shook his head. “I had to work. School was never really a place I was going to be able to go to, anyways. Only the sons of the men I worked for ever went.” He paused. “Why do you want to know?”  
Rosie smiled. Jason caught his breath. “What Ajax said about his school friends and volcano weather made me wonder.” She considered him for a few moments. “I suppose you just picked up the common speech as part of your job?”   
Jason was confused for a moment. “I guess,” he said. “Everybody speaks this in Sol. I’ve heard other languages, but this is the only one I know.”   
“You just worked unloading ships?” Rosie asked.  
Jason nodded. “Mr. Lucts, the man who owned all the ships I worked on, was an old friend of my landlady. She helped me get the job.”  
“What kinds of things did you handle?” Rosie asked. She leaned a bit closer to him in interest.   
“All sorts,” he said, smiling. “I once picked up something made of real gold.”  
“What was it?” Rosie asked, smiling with him.   
“Some kind of pitcher. I think he wanted to sell it to King Theres,” Jason said. “At least, that’s what I heard.”  
“That sounds exciting,” Ajax said, returning with a huge pile of timbers in his arms.  
“Well, let’s get warm with this, then,” she said, walking over to Ajax and arranging all his findings into orderly piles. She started up their kindling and entrusted the fire to the boys. Then she went off to find their dinner.


End file.
